Hi Melissa and my American colleagues,
Think carefully before you do this - it has been done in Australia. We
have ALIA the national association for Librarians and ASLA, the national
asssociation for school librarians. We also have state organisations for
both associations that feed into the national bodies, but Victorian TLs
weren't happy with ASLA so they formed SLAV and operate quite
separately, with Tasmania also tending to do largely their own thing,
especially with cataloguing.
While the LIS profession is very diverse, it helps to have a strong
national body. ALIA and ASLA have spent the last 4-5 years trying to get
the two associations back working together. Perhaps you should form a
sub-section of ALA, make sure you have representatives on the main
committees and admninistrative body of ALA, a day or major stream at
every national conference that is devoted to TLs and school libraries,
ensure that your sector publishes regularly in your professional
journal. This requires effort and a strong commitment from TLs, but you
will still have the clout of a national body that represents LIS across
all sectors. During times when we are facing funding and staffing cuts
it is important that all sides of the profession stick together,
particularly when the world of information is in such a transition
period.
:)
BC
Vice President, Advocacy & Promotion, IASL: http://www.iasl-slo.org/
LIS@ECU: http://www.chs.ecu.edu.au/portals/LIS/index.php
Convenor for the Transforming Information and Learning Conference
http://www.chs.ecu.edu.au/TILC
Barbara Combes, Lecturer
School of Computer and Information Science Edith Cowan University, Perth
Western Australia
Ph: (08) 9370 6072
Email: b.combes@ecu.edu.au
"Whatever the cost of our libraries, the price is cheap compared to that
of an ignorant nation." Walter Cronkite
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-----Original Message-----
From: School Library Media & Network Communications
[mailto:LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Melissa Techman
Sent: Sunday, 8 April 2007 9:42 AM
To: LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: [LM_NET] Follow-up to Peter's comments - break away from ALA?
What if we started a new group - something like TLA - Teacher Librarian
Advocates - and our focus was solely advocating for our profession? We
could still belong to ALA (or not), we could still be leaders in our
schools, and we could still be doing excellent jobs. However, we would
not be relying on (or should that be waiting for?) ALA to tell the
public who we are and what we do. We could have low dues and they could
initially all go to pay for the big PR message that needs to be on TV
and in newspapers, etc. "If you know how to judge what's valid and
what's hype in a world of information overload, thank a Teacher
Librarian", for example.
For all the good things ALA is and does, there is one important area in
which it has never excelled: promoting the importance of librarians to
the public in a way they understand. Advancing the profession in a way
that leads to better salaries, more opportunities and a well-understood
"brand" seems to be beyond ALA's abilities.
Several of my professors mentioned this problem in my MLS program in the
early 90's!
When my father started an early version of distance learning for
economists and govt. ministers in Eastern Europe (late 80's? early
90's), he hired someone with an MIS degree to manage the delivery of
information - he didn't know he had other choices!
When I was in the public library and I heard of a state's "Educational
Media" organization, I thought it was an industry group that produced
instructional videos!
I think that low salaries, mystified consumers, library closings and
budget cuts all point to the fact that the important message has yet to
be conveyed.
Grassroots movements, super collaborators, spokespeople/practitioners,
curriculum writers, etc. are necessary but not sufficient to produce the
results we need.
Until we have a big, clear message that reaches the public in a big way,
I bet we will be revisiting this whole topic again and again and
again.....
And the ALA website will still be telling us how to speak up in our own
little ponds and how to contact legislators and if that was all that was
needed, it would have worked by now...
Melissa Techman, MLS
Broadus Wood Elementary School,
185 Buck Mtn. Rd,
Earlysville, VA 22901
434-973-3865
mtechman@k12albemarle.org
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