I posted the following question on the “Your Ideas” section of the website. After reading Camila’s response, I thought it should be posted on the blog – in case some of you don’t get around to reading the “Ideas” portion. As a follow up to Camila’s response, I agree that more advocacy needs to be done. I am a member of my state’s advocacy committee, as well as the AASL Legislation committee. I hope that ALL librarians would help each other out in this area of advocacy, not just those in school libraries. The more voices heard by our congressmen and women, the better.

Thus, I hope if you’re working in a public or academic library, whether or not you have children in the school system, and whether or not your school system has a school librarian, that you’ll take the time to contact your representatives about the SKILLs Act and get involved in advocacy for school libraries. I feel that it takes ALL of us in the various areas of librarianship within ALA to unite together to help school librarians across the country. Thanks for seeing the “vision,” Camila.

My first Post:

Hola Camila. As a future school librarian (I just graduated with my MLS), I am interested in how you will help school libraries across the country who are closing by the hundreds, with many school librarians losing their jobs. In my state, there is a HUGE gap between the rich and the poor neighborhoods, as the state requires they be funded by individual communities. Thus, poor parents do not have the money to pay more in taxes for a school librarian, and their schools do not have them. However, in the richer communities where parents pay the extra taxes, they have school librarians. This is because my state (MA) does not require school librarians (except for high school.)

As a result, poor/middle class students are not learning information literacy skills to prepare them for higher education, while the rich are getting these skills and more through their school librarians. I have often wished that ALA would step into the picture and help this issue. We always hear about the problems public librarians face, but no one talks about the problems school librarians face. Do you have any ideas for how these issues could be addressed? I see it as a diversity issue with the poorer communities being mostly Latino & African American being denied their education. How could ALA help to reverse this very bad trend? –Alma

Camila’s Response:

Greetings, Alma –
First of all — good for your for your commitment to school libraries! I have a soft spot and a lot of respect for school librarians as that is how I started my career. Thank you for posting your question and sharing your concerns about the lack of funding to cover school librarian salaries in your district/state; this is a widespread problem across the country. I would agree that there needs to be strong advocacy for school libraries nationwide and as ALA president I would be strongly supporting better funding for school libraries and the hiring of school librarians.

Right now we are really pushing the SKILLS ACT which is co-sponsored by Rep. Raul Grijalva [D-AZ] which would work towards having a school librarian in every school. I chair ALA’s Committee on Legislation and realized when getting ready to make appointments that there were hardly any school librarians on the COL subcommittees especially in grassroots advocacy. I appointed 2 of them to that committee. Additionally, I have been an advocacy trainer for years and hope to continue to train more people in grassroots advocacy. I have been really pushing for more “grassroots” advocacy — which means everyone getting involved in advocating for libraries [not just library administrators]. There needs to be more advocacy training for “frontline” folks [just like what you will be] to take away the mystery of and intimidation concerning advocacy. We need to be able to “tell our story” well and convincingly. We have to be able to use the power of persuasion to let decision-makers/legislators/policy-makers/school boards/… and the list could go on and on….know how important school libraries are to the welfare of our children and our communities.

I would also agree that there is a real difference between schools that are better funded and, consequently, can afford to hire school librarians and those that can’t. Unfortunately, those that can’t afford to do this widens the gap between children who are information-rich and those who are information-poor. And, unfortunately, this tends to happen more in schools that serve our minority children. If elected, I plan to put together an action task force dealing with school libraries and youth services. I have not forgotten that those of you school librarians prepare the students we deal with in academic and public libraries.
CAMILA

Greetings from Moscow! I and others had the opportunity to meet with colleagues from Moscow State University for Culture and Arts and Russian State University for the Humanities Library. In the latter meeting, Eduard Sukiasyan, the main editor for “BBK” from the Russian State Library [Library of Congress' counterpart], responded to our question about the kind of IT challenges Russian libraries face.

Eduard chose to talk about the Russian school libraries. He said there were over 46,000 school libraries in Russia and most of them do not have any access to the Internet. They may have some PCs but not Internet access. He and others saw this is a major challenge. He said that they were working on this, but it was going very slow. Our delegation was very surprised. I realize that there may be school libraries in the U.S. that may fall into that category but not to the extent as here in Russia.

As I reflected at the end of the day here in Russia, I thought about the progress we are hoping to make here in the U.S. by working hard on the Skills Act [co-sponsored by Rep. Raul Grijalva [Az] – an ardent library and Reforma supporter] to have a qualified school librarian in every school library in our respective school districts as part of the No Child Left Behind reauthorization bill. We have got to turn our situation around to put all our effort into getting that act in and the bill passed! As chair of the ALA Committee on Legislation and as your next ALA president, I will continue to work hard on this effort and other efforts to improve the quality of library services to our school children by getting qualified personnel back into those libraries.

On another note, Eduard also commented on President Putin’s support of libraries in Russia. In fact, Putin announced several months ago that he was establishing a presidential library which would be a virtual library concentrating on government, law, and history. There would be branches of this library throughout Russia. (Our delegation didn’t know the context of “branches” if this library was going to be completely electronic…) Nonetheless, our Russian colleagues were excited about this visible support from their president.

This trip has been very rewarding…. we have already found a way we can collaborate with our colleagues from Russian State University. More later…… it has been a long but exciting day!

CAMILA