By Dr. Susan La Marca
The mission statement of the School Library Association of Victoria (SLAV) reads:
The School Library Association of Victoria offers dynamic and inspiring opportunities for teacher-librarians and library teams to build their essential role in engaging and developing lifelong learners.
- Leadership: Enhancing awareness of global educational research, innovation and best practice in school libraries.
- Advocacy: Articulating the role of the school library as a partner in the learning and teaching process.
- Collegiality: Connecting members through a local and a state-wide network and community.
In order to fulfil these aims SLAV has created a range of programs and initiatives that strive to address the needs of its members as they seek to offer excellent school libraries supporting and leading teaching and learning in their communities.
Council Network
The governing body of SLAV is its Council. This Council is made up of office bearers of the association and convenors of the various branches of the association. There are approximately fifteen branches throughout the state; each branch runs regular local activities in its area to support the needs of members. The branch convenor, or convenors, also take an active role in disseminating information from Council meetings on decisions and state-wide activities, as well as taking ideas and thoughts from members to Council meetings. This structure is directly linked to the collegiate aspect of SLAV’s mission statement – ensuring members feel connected at a grass roots level, offering members a local network of support and sharing, and facilitating meaningful links between the local branch and the larger, state-wide community.
Most importantly this wonderful branch network is an immediate link for members to those who work in their respective geographic locations. This offers everyone the chance to hear about excellent examples of practice, programs, ideas and strategies that others have found successful. This provides members immediate and tested initiatives upon which they can build within their own contexts. In a broader sense, the branches operate as an effective network for disseminating ideas and initiatives from the governing state Council to where they are needed and acted upon.
Journals
SLAV has two journals: FYI is distributed four times a year in hardcopy to every member school and highlights best practice, resources and the activities of members. Synergy, the association’s online journal, is published twice a year and recently celebrated fifteen years of publication. Some years ago the association decided to place all past issues of the online journal on open access, with only the most recent edition being on closed access to members. The journal’s aim has always been to engage with issues and ideas from the broader education sphere and SLAV believes this offers the wider community access to a range of interesting and thoughtful articles from the field of school librarianship and also highlights the good work being undertaken in the state of Victoria. Synergy also publishes longer articles and features research and examples of best practice.
Offering these professional reading opportunities to members is a first step in encouraging thoughtful analysis of our profession. Both journals serve to give members examples they can replicate and ideas and views that are engaging and inspiring.
The journals also serve to foster a collegiality within the community by celebrating achievements and sharing ideas and resources. Members are also encouraged to share articles from both journals with colleagues from a range of learning areas within their schools as an example of the role of the school library in enriching all areas of learning and a method by which the importance of the school library to student learning may be encouraged and highlighted. It also opens up avenues of discussion between the library and the classroom.
Professional Learning Program
SLAV offers an extensive program of professional learning activities that endeavour to reach a broad range of professionals. In recent years, in recognition of the changing qualifications and make up of library professionals working in school libraries, we have worked hard to offer programs that suit a variety of individuals, from the very experienced, qualified teacher-librarian to those with varied skill sets and qualifications. We are also endeavouring to cater for varied needs in relation to topics and are offering a range of professional learning event styles – from formal conferences to workshops to podcasts. All approaches are valid, and the association has worked actively to offer variety.
Ultimately all forms of professional learning seek to increase the skill base of our membership to enable them to be the best advocates for the profession they can be. We need, and want, our members to constantly strive for best practice in everything they do. Ultimately the best form of advocacy for them, in their workplaces, and for the wider profession, is for every practitioner to offer outstanding opportunities for teaching and learning to their school community.
The Essential School Library
In an excellent article entitled ‘Making Your School Library Essential: An Advocacy Guide for Teacher-Librarians’, for her regular Synergy column, Research into Practice, Dr Carol Gordon described what she termed the essential school library. She said:
The Essential School Library has the following outcomes:
(Gordon, 2019)
Curious learners who participate in information-based inquiry;
Literate learners who use information systems and read multimedia with comprehension;
Collaborative learners who demonstrate information-technology skills and content knowledge; and
Equitable school library experiences for ALL learners that meet their personalised needs.
School libraries that are accepted as essential, that foster these outcomes, are the advocates we must celebrate. As a professional association, SLAV must work hard through its many programs to support and applaud these essential school libraries.
Recently, in order to highlight the role of best practice examples of school libraries within their communities, SLAV created a “Statement on School Libraries” to clearly articulate what they offer:
Statement on School Libraries
School libraries are central to the school’s community of learning.
They reflect and contribute to the achievement of the school’s mission by:
- Providing an engaging and welcoming physical and virtual cultural space that is challenging, inspiring and secure,
- Unlocking the potential for learning through the support of independent and collaborative learning opportunities that encourage critical and creative thinking and enrich student outcomes,
- Managing and curating equitable, inclusive and diverse physical and digital collections that reflect both a local and global perspective,
- Initiating programs that develop literacy, information literacy, a reading culture and essential lifelong learning skills,
- Guiding the school community to become digital citizens, competent in the safe and ethical use of information.
Qualified school library professionals have the knowledge and skills to collaborate with teachers to achieve curriculum outcomes.
Ratified SLAV Council 1st December 2018 (https://slav.org.au/Advocacy)
School libraries that demonstrate these characteristics are examples of best practice in our profession and, as such, they are performing what Anita Brooks Kirkland calls “action advocacy” Kirkland says:
We all own advocacy, at every level of an organization and across the profession. We demonstrate our worth and move the profession and program forward through what we do every day. I call this approach action advocacy.
(Kirkland, 2019)
By clearly articulating what the association considers to be best practice and creating programs to support and enrich best practice, the association hopes to be both fostering and practicing “action advocacy”.
Partnerships
In order to advocate effectively, SLAV has worked to create partnerships at all levels. This association strategy models how school library professionals need to view and interact with their immediate world – considering all relationships or partnerships as possibilities for furthering the conversation about student learning and the role of the school library.
Recently, SLAV created a partnership with WASLA, the West Australian School Library Association. Western Australia is another state-based association, on the west coast of Australia, similar to SLAV in its make-up and objectives. Several years ago, WASLA had created a wonderful website – Literacy Matters – a place to visit for professional reading, evidence or research on literacy from around the world. Barbara Combes wrote an excellent article about the site for Synergy (Combes, 2016). This year, the two associations have come together with members of the Oceania region of the International Association of School Librarianship (IASL) to work on a companion site entitled “Information Literacy Matters” that will be promoted by both associations.
In recent years SLAV have also been involved in the School Libraries Coalition that brings together a range of school library focused organisations within Australia for a common purpose. Both initiatives offer examples of partnerships with other state associations.
School Libraries Coalition
This coalition has worked on a number of different initiatives, seeking to draw attention to the specific campaign entitled: Students Need School Libraries.
Various outreach initiatives may be seen on the website https://studentsneedschoollibraries.org.au/. A range of videos and resources have also been added to the site, many of which could be used in other contexts.
This coalition activity has been valuable in giving a national, united voice to current concerns regarding staffing and funding that are universal and not limited to any particular state or country.
Professional Teaching Associations
Recently, we have had the opportunity to reach out laterally to other professional teaching associations in our state in an effort to be collegiate with our fellow teachers and to seek to keep the role of the school library in learning front and centre in the minds of educators of all kinds.
The Victorian Association of the Teaching of English (VATE) invited SLAV to contribute to an edition of their journal Idiom that was focused on texts. Two articles were published: “Who Says Boys Don’t Read?”, by Julie Pagliaro, and “Texts and the School Library” by Susan La Marca. Both articles featured examples of best practice in library-based, literacy-focused programs. Our members were encouraged to follow this up with a discussion with the English teachers in their respective schools who had received the journal.
SLAV has also run a joint “maker meet” session with two other state associations – the Digital Learning Teachers of Victoria (DLTV) and the Design and Technology Teachers Association (DATTA Vic). The sessions were on maker spaces and featured a range of cheap and easy projects which could readily be undertaken with students. The sessions successfully brought together a range of different teachers and library professionals to share and promote a common interest.
Earlier in 2019 we also worked with the History Teachers Association of Victoria (HTAV) to jointly write an article entitled: “The History Teacher, The School Librarian and the Zone of Mutual Benefit”. This article was printed in Synergy and the HTAV journal, Agora. Members were again encouraged to discuss the article with their own school’s history teachers in the hope that the ideas in the article would give members a chance to begin a dialogue within their school about possible collaborations.
At the beginning of 2018 SLAV joined the International Association of School Librarianship (IASL) as a Partner Membership Association. This membership entitles SLAV members to many of the benefits of IASL membership and is therefore an additional facet of SLAV membership. It is also part of SLAV’s effort to engage with a wider community beyond our own state and to build connections and partnerships that benefit members and the profession. We encourage our members to view themselves as part of an international community, including participation in events like International School Libraries Month and the various events created by IASL to support celebrations.
What a School Library Can Do for You – An Infographic
In 2018, SLAV decided to create an infographic entitled “What a School Library Can Do For You”. The idea was to create an engaging image that could be used in a range of ways to further our promotional efforts. The infographic has been shared freely and widely. It is on the school library coalition website, our own SLAV website, and has also been shared with the IASL community. Across the last year, we have handed out poster versions at conferences for display in schools.
We plan to create a clickable version of the image in the near future on our website that lists evidence, reports, etc. in relation to each area featured on the poster. The images on the infographic have also been used in enewsletter and on our website, giving a holistic feel to our message and making the concepts and ideas memorable.
Advocacy of any kind is a multi-pronged, interconnected web of approaches and actions. As Kirkland said “we all own (it)”. SLAV strives to be part of an ongoing conversation in both words and actions and to support its members and the wider community. Ultimately, any effort that improves the access of students to quality school libraries and excellent school library programs and collections of all kinds, benefits students and their learning. This is always the aim.
References
Combes, B. (2016). Literacy Matters! Literacy, Advocacy and the Teacher-Librarian. Synergy, 14(2). Retrieved from https://www.slav.vic.edu.au/index.php/Synergy/article/view/16
Gordon, C. A. (2019). Making Your School Library Essential: An Advocacy Guide for Teacher-Librarians. Synergy, 15(1). Retrieved from https://www.slav.vic.edu.au/index.php/Synergy/article/view/34
Hull, D., & La Marca, S. (2019). The History Teacher, the School Librarian and the Zone of Mutual Benefit. Synergy, 16(2). Retrieved from https://www.slav.vic.edu.au/index.php/Synergy/article/view/64
Kirkland, A. B. (2019). Action Advocacy for School Libraries. Synergy, 15(2). In process. Available online at www.slav.vic.edu.au late October 2019.
Dr. Susan La Marca is a consultant in the areas of children’s and young adult literature and school libraries and currently the Executive Officer of the School Library Association of Victoria (SLAV) and the editor of their journal Synergy.
Susan is an adjunct lecturer in the School of Information Studies at Charles Sturt University and is the Regional Director for Oceania of the International Association of School Librarianship (IASL).
Her PhD thesis analysed the factors that contribute to the creation of a reading environment in secondary school libraries, she has presented, on this and the area of design, both nationally and internationally.
Susan has been a regular reviewer and commentator on books for young people for many years and has also edited a number of texts in the field of teacher-librarianship including Back to Books: Creating a Focus on Fiction (SLAV,1999), Books up Front: Investing in the Value of Reading (SLAV, 2001), Effective Learning Spaces: Inspiration for School Library Design (SLAV, 2003) and Rethink: Ideas for Inspiring School Library Design (SLAV, 2007). Susan is the co-author, with Dr Pam Macintyre, of Knowing Readers: Unlocking the Pleasures of Reading (SLAV, 2006) and wrote the book Designing the Learning Environment. (ACER, 2010). Susan also edited, with Dr Pam Macintyre, the short story collections Things a Map Won’t Show You: Stories from Australia and Beyond (Penguin Books, 2012) and Where the Shoreline Used to Be (2016).