Umbrella 2011: School Library Research - part two without one!

Umbrella 2011

School Library Research: where next

 [Now I’ll start my notes with a hasty apology for the first speaker’s talk of the session – I gabbed too long in the Exhibition and was somewhat harried and late for the start so I missed quite a lot so feel I’m better starting from the second.]

Speaker 2 – David Streatfield

The Research

Discussion of research carried out using funding from Wendy Drewett Bequest from CILIP with active involvement by SLG.  Purpose being to try and get some baseline information for secondary schools of all types re libray provision and what the school librarian does.

Background to research being general concern school library provision worsening, research carried out just prior to the Coalition Government coming into power.  School libraries not a statutory service, pressure on school budgets, concern about internet being used as substitute.

Survey concentrated on various activities – management, funding, reading, information literacy, support for teaching and learning, academic and professional qualifications, key role, stories of success and failure.

Key findings

School budgets weren’t doing well with 32% cut and a lot the same as previous year, almost 60% school librarians supervised by senior manager, high concentration on promoting reading and information literacy, problems re ‘first language’ needs, lot of ‘pastoral care’ being undertaken. It was found that those with academic / professional qualifications did more promotion of reading and information literacy work and got more involved with aspects such as intranets, a lot had dual qualifications in education and LIS.

Promotion and next steps

Work on promoting the findings within and outwith the profession. Had House of Commons launch, been various press coverage and sectoral (to LIS and education).  The results need to be analysed more as lots of rich material, the pastoral care angle needs more research. Interesting questions re how to develop library staff as educators e.g. embed awareness  in teacher training. Need to promote role of the school librarian to school leaders and engage government and policy formers. Need to look at next ways forward.

Comments

There was an interesting question at the end of this session noting that it had concentrated quite a lot on qualitative evidence and asking about quantitative information (on basis politicians etc. want numbers). There was a fairly wide-ranging discussion of the difficulties of doing this for a complex area and of showing causal connections between e.g. school library and exam results.

Opinion…

I’m sorry I missed the start of this so haven’t done proper justice to the first part of it which was also very interesting. I’ve never been a school librarian but thought a lot of what was being discussed is also applicable to other sectors, particularly around showing the value that comes out, not just the cost of the resource that goes in (a much simpler calculation). It is important contextual information for any sector to have survey information, it can help make an internal case for a lot of things as well as confirm trends and show things you didn’t know and suggest further avenues. As with a lot of sessions I attended I thought it was the same themes coming out in many ways.