Wednesday, February 3, 2010

School Librarian or Teacher Librarian

This is especially for Independent School Librarians:
Please read Cathy Nelson's blog post and comment - which title do you prefer? Why does it seem that most independent School Librarians like the term School Librarian?  Are our jobs and responsibilities that different? Are our goals different? I don't think so. It seems very important to many public school librarians to switch to Teacher-Librarian. We do need some consistency in this - where do you stand and why?

2 comments:

  1. Elisabeth -- Didn't want to comment directly on Cathy's blog, but here's my two cents: Is it possibly as simplistic as, all public schools require a teaching credential as well as a school library media credential, while most private schools (at least in my experience here in Southern California) require only an MLIS but not a teaching credential? Could explain why public school librarians strongly identify as teachers -- because they are -- while private school librarians might identify first as librarians. Not that we don't teach, because obviously that's a huge part of our job, but....

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  2. I agree. I think we are attached to the word Librarian in such a positive way, but perhaps some of our public school counterparts need the word teacher in there to satisfy their classification as professionals in the system or bureaucracy.

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