By Barbara Whiston & Kelly Bergevin
What an exciting time to be a school librarian!
The students and staff have returned to our libraries after over one year of limited or no access, and it is exciting to see just how positive the Covid aftermath is proving to be. As President and Vice-President of the Youth and School Libraries Section of the Association des bibliothécaires du Québec Library Association (ABQLA), we are privileged to connect with library staff from across the province. The news we are hearing is encouraging, and we wish to share some heartening ground truth from the school libraries of Quebec.
First and most importantly, the students are back! And the staff who may have been cut or redistributed during the height of the Covid pandemic have returned to their natural habitat. School libraries, many of which were repurposed as pandemic compliant teacher office spaces, are open to the students again, and it is clear that the students had not forgotten, or have rediscovered, just what wonderful places they can be.
Library orientations are back, as are regular library periods. Outside of class visits, students are flocking to Quebec school libraries just as we had hoped. Before school, at lunch, after school, they are back, in what is a welcome return to ‘normal’.
Amid this ‘normal’, the Fall 2021 return to school has also brought with it some unexpected but inspiring developments, some evidence that the seeds sown by librarian staff are coming to bear fruit.
- Some important progress is growing from simple but revolutionary first steps. For example, a librarian in one Montreal private religious school prepared her school’s first ever Pride display in June 2021. The feedback from the community was overwhelmingly positive, leading one teacher to start a Pride Club. The seeds planted at the end of an unsettling and exhausting pandemic year, in what might have seemed the least auspicious circumstances, have taken root and had an impact on the culture of the school.
- Students have retained and continue to apply their newly honed OPAC skills. In one high school where the students had only ever browsed in person for books before the pandemic hit, the use of online resources has become second nature, and the students are continuing to use the OPAC to find and reserve books to read. They still visit the library in person in large numbers, but their mastery of available tools has grown and persisted.
- Clubs are more popular than ever before. One high school librarian reported that clubs which in prior years would attract only a handful of students, are now drawing more than 20 students each. This phenomenon is across the board: whether it be knitting, Dungeons and Dragons, coding, 3-D printing, bracelet making, button making, school librarians are reporting an enthusiastic resurgence in clubs of all sorts.
- In July 2021, Publishers Weekly announced that paper books appear to be trending, and school library staff tell us that students have been requesting material they seldom sought pre-pandemic, such as philosophy and wellness.
The positive changes extend to the lives of the library staff as well. Firstly, after months spent responding to ever changing in school reality, we are out of reaction mode, and librarians are looking ahead and planning how to make the best of the opportunity that Covid has given us to re-evaluate what we do and to look creatively at our services. Secondly, the informal virtual networks forged by school librarians to help navigate the pandemic are still in place, continuing knowledge sharing and innovation as the landscape continues to shift. Formal groups, like the Youth and School Library section of the Association des bibliothécaires du Québec Library Association, are also experiencing a surge in activity.
The pandemic opened the opportunity for librarians to participate in events and activities outside of our local communities, allowing us to interact with distant colleagues. This increase in reach seems to be a gift we will continue to carry well into the future. The ABQLA Youth & School Section is leveraging this increased reach to promote connectedness and growth by hosting a variety of online events throughout the fall and winter. Open to all school library personnel and volunteers across the country, these events hope to stimulate conversation surrounding topics of interest to those focused on youth librarianship.
- For example, On October 14, Jonelle St. Aubyn & Christina Niro of the Peel Regional School Board presented on Hosting a Human Library in a popular event that attracted attendees from across public and school libraries in four provinces. Previously presented at the 2021 OLA Super Conference, the presenters discussed their work organizing a human library event for the secondary school library learning commons. This international movement, which started in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2000, uses human participants to act in the place of books by sharing their stories to interested readers. Through sharing the various lived experiences of each human book, human libraries work to promote tolerance and challenge stigmas.
- In late November, Julie Bouchard of the Westmount Public Library will be introducing us to a very special project, as well as the related resources, challenges, and successes. The project she has been leading has been this: in accordance with the recommendations of the CFLA-FCAB Truth and Reconciliation Report, the Westmount Public Library has been working on updating its catalogue subjects associated with Indigenous peoples. The objective of the project is to use more accurate and respectful wording to describe library materials in relation to Indigenous peoples. This topic is also proving enormously popular, attracting librarians from a range of workplace settings and from across Canada.
- For the Winter 2022 term, we have planned two events that we hope will also draw librarians from far and wide. In February, Joanne Plante, President of the School Libraries section of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), will share her expertise on the subject of school libraries across the world. In March, Rabia Khokhar, from the Toronto District School Board will tackle the nerve-racking topic of weeding through a social justice lens. She will discuss how weeding is one of the ways we can collectively work to ensure authentic representation and justice for all community members. Participants will learn frameworks and methods to critically think about weeding with an equity lens. They will also explore and consider their specific positional power and responsibility as school librarians and library professionals to curate a relevant, responsive, current collection that represents the local and broader communities.
These events are open, free of charge, to all library staff and volunteers, so we invite you to visit abqla.qc.ca for more details and to register. We hope you will join us, celebrate the broader community that Covid brought us, and share the great work being done in school libraries across Canada. Just visit Eventbrite and search for ABQLA to find and register for our events.
This is proving to be a time of unprecedented connection and vibrance in the school library world. Let’s celebrate it together.
Barbara Whiston is a youth librarian living and working in Montreal. When she isn’t librarianing or serving the ABQLA as Co-President and as President of its Youth and School Section, Barbara enjoys walking to her local library after it has closed so she avoids the shame and embarrassment of returning her books late.
Kelly Bergevin is a recent graduate from McGill’s School of Information Studies. While on maternity leave, she’s serving as the Vice-President of the ABQLA Youth & School Section and practicing youth librarianship by cuddling up on the couch with a YA novel, coffee, and her dog.