I am so excited.
The prac report has been sent but I thought I might share my perosnal reflection here...
Being placed in a public library could not have
provided a more alien experience to my own work as a teacher-librarian. While
many of the processes and core work are the same, the scale cannot be compared.
Undertaking my placement at the end of my teacher-librarian studies has had
both its positive and negative aspects. On the down side I have already been
working as a teacher-librarian for over a year and have come into my own habits
and understanding of what it is to be a librarian. So I was quite apprehensive
about undertaking the placement. What I have come to realise is the value of
the placement experience lies in its ability to offer a teacher-librarian in
training the opportunity to partake in new and different experiences.
Personally, it also meant working with fully qualified and often very
experienced librarians who were able to share their depth of library knowledge
with me. This reminded me that I am not alone in the library world. Working in
a school library can be an isolating experience as the teacher-librarian is
often the only librarian. And while many of the librarians I met on placement
did have specific roles within the library linked to cataloguing or collection
management what was satisfying to see is that all librarians are linked by the
core role of providing access to information for their patrons.
The value of the placement experience also lies in its
ability to allow one to put theoretical knowledge into practice. Until now
organisational theory had been just that – theory. In a school the library is
not really an organisation in itself, but rather one component of the larger
school organisation. Thus as a teacher-librarian, while I manage some staff and
make some decisions, the strategic plans and goals stem from the school
organisation rather than the library. This is completely different I feel to
how most libraries, and how Penrith library in particular, see themselves. The
placement experience has allowed me to see that a similar relationship exists
between a public library and its governing body, the council. However, a public
library seems to act more autonomously and this is something I think has value,
and would add value to my own library. It highlights the idea of the librarian
as leader – another concept which until now I had only seen in theory. While I
had understood that the teacher-librarian should be a leader, until the
placement experience I had not seen how this was possible. The placement
experience has reinforced one aspect of the role of the teacher-librarian and that
is that all librarians, including teacher-librarians, need to be advocates for
their libraries and their users.
I think the greatest value of this placement
experience for me is that it has also led me to consider what I believe the
core role of a teacher-librarian to be. It has made me realise that I want to
be, a teacher-librarian, not just a librarian.
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