A Teacher Librarian has to wear a lot of different hats as the ALIA document shows and a great deal of it also seems to involve justification of the job. Many people think that libraries are no longer as relevant as they once were because these days you can find anything you need using the Internet. Students in particular seem to have this view and it now seems that it is a necessity for TL’s to prove themselves and their worth. Their role has to be justified. (Purcell, 2010)
I have been able to see firsthand when doing my placement recently how the librarians had to justify their existence. The many forms that had to be completed, the records kept of user numbers, phone calls to the library, how many were answered, what the topic was about, how many desk queries had been made; record slips had to be completed detailing the query and the solution and it went on. It was frightening to see the reality of the work of a librarian becoming numbers on a page and statistics on spread sheets. Even the liaison librarians were not immune to this kind of record keeping. They also had to keep records of queries received and action taken. All of this record keeping was on top of their normal everyday duties they were assigned. I can understand this though from another perspective, that of a financial one. Deakin uses what it refers to as cloud teaching - another term for distance education and books and materials are sent around the world to students and records of this need to be kept for budgeting purposes at least. What amazed me more than anything was that one librarian was in fact more of an office manager, keeping an eye on the statistics and usage rates - anything that would justify the work being done in the library.
Surprisingly in the west it is now a matter of being seen and becoming more visible, not ‘hiding’ in the library as it were. Herring (2007) expressed that teacher librarians mission is to “promote a supportive, effective and enjoyable information environment which will enhance lifelong learning and teaching opportunities for all members of the school community” (Herring, 2007) Here in Hong Kong it seems as if there isn't a need for justification in local school libraries and perhaps there are a few reasons why. The library is an accepted but generally unused part of the school. It is there and will always be there. There isn't a great need to justify expenses because most don't run special programs that need huge amounts of funds or manpower or justification like say for example a large multi campus university library.
My experience of libraries and how they work in local schools in Hong Kong has been something I have referred to in my learning throughout this course. It has in part coloured my views of librarians and libraries in Hong Kong and yet also made me hyper aware that there are always circumstances that dictate what a library is within a school and also how it is used.
To understand this you first have to understand Hong Kong and my role in education in local schools in Hong Kong. I have highlighted the word local because there is a real difference between libraries in local schools, compared to those in the private, so called international schools and also the English Schools Foundation schools. I haven’t worked in a school for the last three and a half years and when it came time to do assignments that referred to TL’s in schools, my experiences weren’t that relevant or applicable, especially since a lot of the reading material came from librarians and researchers who referred to practices in libraries in Australia or the USA.
Working as a NET Teacher in Hong Kong for 13 years...
I worked at a total of four local schools. The first one was a Chinese medium of instruction school. The others were all English medium of instruction schools.
In some of those schools I knew the librarian, visited the library, sent my kids to the library - albeit to get a copy of the past exam papers or to do some photocopying, or took them myself so that they could choose books for the Extensive Reading Program run in Form 1 and Form 2 (Year 7 and 8 in Australia). That was the extent of usage of the library, sadly. Some had reading programs for the junior students to encourage them to read in English, which were run by the English teachers with the assistance of the librarian in place at those particular schools .
The librarians at my last two schools were the ones who kept me in books - helping me to feed my book addiction. They ran the Ashton Scholastic program and I got the catalogs and ordered books and read them and then shared them with my kids. I knew what their roles were and what they did and how they could help both the kids and myself. The second last school - True Light, was the one that had the library that most resembled a library that I knew from my days in Australian schools. It wasn't just a place that had books that were never used.
Unfortunately, the way that the Hong Kong curriculum is designed and tested, there really isn’t that much of a need for the students to go to the library and even if there was a need, there is no time for this kind of activity – you have to teach and get the scheme of work done! Then there are the exams - assessment in Hong Kong is exam based and that means no or very few independent research opportunities for students. This led to issues that will be mentioned in the topic Digital Literacy about the lack of digital literacy in Hong Kong schools and as a result the plagiarism which resulted in severe penalties for the students involved.
There are other factors that ‘prevent’ library visits. The size of the library is a big factor. Unless it is a new build then it is highly likely that it is small – the size of 2 standard classrooms and here in Hong Kong, one classroom is just big enough to fit the desks of 40+ kids and a teachers desk and if you are lucky you get a small walkway between desks. Now imagine a library of the same size with bookshelves taking up at least one of the so called rooms and then there isn’t much space left for much else, except for the ubiquitous Cantonese staff meetings!
Libraries must meet the needs of their clients. In Hong Kong, factors hampering library use are the intensive curriculum, insularity of the subjects, the departments and teachers, the lack of time to take students to the library, as well as the fact that most libraries have difficulty accommodating classes of 40 – average for Hong Kong classes.
The onus would be on the librarian to impart the validity and importance of using the library to teachers and showing them how to best make use of what it has to offer for the benefit of students and their learning outcomes. Teachers lack knowledge and understanding of the various Web 2.0 tools available and the librarian must be the resource person. The implementation of the new curriculum was the perfect place to start. I had hoped that the changes to the curriculum would see collaboration and mediation between teachers and librarians as mentioned by Herring (2011) and greater use of the library, however the issues with plagiarism which will be mentioned in more detail in the section on Digital Literacy have proven that this dream has yet to come to fruition.
I have been able to see firsthand when doing my placement recently how the librarians had to justify their existence. The many forms that had to be completed, the records kept of user numbers, phone calls to the library, how many were answered, what the topic was about, how many desk queries had been made; record slips had to be completed detailing the query and the solution and it went on. It was frightening to see the reality of the work of a librarian becoming numbers on a page and statistics on spread sheets. Even the liaison librarians were not immune to this kind of record keeping. They also had to keep records of queries received and action taken. All of this record keeping was on top of their normal everyday duties they were assigned. I can understand this though from another perspective, that of a financial one. Deakin uses what it refers to as cloud teaching - another term for distance education and books and materials are sent around the world to students and records of this need to be kept for budgeting purposes at least. What amazed me more than anything was that one librarian was in fact more of an office manager, keeping an eye on the statistics and usage rates - anything that would justify the work being done in the library.
Surprisingly in the west it is now a matter of being seen and becoming more visible, not ‘hiding’ in the library as it were. Herring (2007) expressed that teacher librarians mission is to “promote a supportive, effective and enjoyable information environment which will enhance lifelong learning and teaching opportunities for all members of the school community” (Herring, 2007) Here in Hong Kong it seems as if there isn't a need for justification in local school libraries and perhaps there are a few reasons why. The library is an accepted but generally unused part of the school. It is there and will always be there. There isn't a great need to justify expenses because most don't run special programs that need huge amounts of funds or manpower or justification like say for example a large multi campus university library.
My experience of libraries and how they work in local schools in Hong Kong has been something I have referred to in my learning throughout this course. It has in part coloured my views of librarians and libraries in Hong Kong and yet also made me hyper aware that there are always circumstances that dictate what a library is within a school and also how it is used.
To understand this you first have to understand Hong Kong and my role in education in local schools in Hong Kong. I have highlighted the word local because there is a real difference between libraries in local schools, compared to those in the private, so called international schools and also the English Schools Foundation schools. I haven’t worked in a school for the last three and a half years and when it came time to do assignments that referred to TL’s in schools, my experiences weren’t that relevant or applicable, especially since a lot of the reading material came from librarians and researchers who referred to practices in libraries in Australia or the USA.
Working as a NET Teacher in Hong Kong for 13 years...
I worked at a total of four local schools. The first one was a Chinese medium of instruction school. The others were all English medium of instruction schools.
In some of those schools I knew the librarian, visited the library, sent my kids to the library - albeit to get a copy of the past exam papers or to do some photocopying, or took them myself so that they could choose books for the Extensive Reading Program run in Form 1 and Form 2 (Year 7 and 8 in Australia). That was the extent of usage of the library, sadly. Some had reading programs for the junior students to encourage them to read in English, which were run by the English teachers with the assistance of the librarian in place at those particular schools .
The librarians at my last two schools were the ones who kept me in books - helping me to feed my book addiction. They ran the Ashton Scholastic program and I got the catalogs and ordered books and read them and then shared them with my kids. I knew what their roles were and what they did and how they could help both the kids and myself. The second last school - True Light, was the one that had the library that most resembled a library that I knew from my days in Australian schools. It wasn't just a place that had books that were never used.
Unfortunately, the way that the Hong Kong curriculum is designed and tested, there really isn’t that much of a need for the students to go to the library and even if there was a need, there is no time for this kind of activity – you have to teach and get the scheme of work done! Then there are the exams - assessment in Hong Kong is exam based and that means no or very few independent research opportunities for students. This led to issues that will be mentioned in the topic Digital Literacy about the lack of digital literacy in Hong Kong schools and as a result the plagiarism which resulted in severe penalties for the students involved.
There are other factors that ‘prevent’ library visits. The size of the library is a big factor. Unless it is a new build then it is highly likely that it is small – the size of 2 standard classrooms and here in Hong Kong, one classroom is just big enough to fit the desks of 40+ kids and a teachers desk and if you are lucky you get a small walkway between desks. Now imagine a library of the same size with bookshelves taking up at least one of the so called rooms and then there isn’t much space left for much else, except for the ubiquitous Cantonese staff meetings!
Libraries must meet the needs of their clients. In Hong Kong, factors hampering library use are the intensive curriculum, insularity of the subjects, the departments and teachers, the lack of time to take students to the library, as well as the fact that most libraries have difficulty accommodating classes of 40 – average for Hong Kong classes.
The onus would be on the librarian to impart the validity and importance of using the library to teachers and showing them how to best make use of what it has to offer for the benefit of students and their learning outcomes. Teachers lack knowledge and understanding of the various Web 2.0 tools available and the librarian must be the resource person. The implementation of the new curriculum was the perfect place to start. I had hoped that the changes to the curriculum would see collaboration and mediation between teachers and librarians as mentioned by Herring (2011) and greater use of the library, however the issues with plagiarism which will be mentioned in more detail in the section on Digital Literacy have proven that this dream has yet to come to fruition.