Week 13: Budgeting & Other Professional Business

This week's readings dealt with the logistical side of school librarianship--how to appropriate your funds, manage your personnel, and tackle those professional learning communities.

While I think it's easy to get wrapped up in the teaching aspect of school librarianship, the readings reminded me that librarians are really distinct from classroom teachers in their managerial duties. And from the readings, these administrative duties don't seem like a light task. The Woolls reading, especially, went into great detail about the many aspects of developing and submitting a budget proposal, including how to determine needs, explain these needs in writing, and provide concrete reasoning for the needs.

Of the readings this week, I found Doug Johnston's blog series on budgeting the most interesting. Some of his key ideas:

• The budget isn't merely a logistical issue, it is an ethical one
• While a lot of "free" information exists, paying for the value of editing is worthwhile
• Information isn't really "free" when computing and other factors are taken into account
• To build a comprehensive collection, maintain both print and electronic resources

He also suggests putting budget shortfalls into tangible terms--without the funding, students won't be able to participate in [fill in awesome activity]. As a librarian, do you just accept the money you're given and make the most of it? Librarians need to determine the materials they need to buy and services they want to support and lobby for an according budget. Still, it's a zero-sum game, and more money for the library means less money for other school programs. What if saving the media center means losing a valuable teacher? Yikes.

The other chapter from Woolls adds some more responsibilities to the school librarian's list. Among these, are how to work with administrators and teachers, how to manage volunteers and students, and how to evaluate personnel. While this is a lot of work, these relationships can also provide the librarian with the opportunity to build critical relationships within the community, whether that means the school or the town. In turn, if managed appropriately, these relationships can provide valuable leverage in advocacy efforts. Again, much of Woolls' material is how-to in nature, explaining best practices for achieving the desired personnel results.

The Coatney reading this week focuses on the relationship of school librarians to professional associations. With these ideas in mind, I read "The Unapologetic Twitvangelist" by Nikki Robertson from School Libraries: What's Now, What's Next, What's Yet to Come. In this piece, Robertson explains how she attended a conference and learned to tweet. Still, she didn't begin using the social media site until awhile later when she came across the #edchat hashtag for a professional learning network. Discovering the information that could be found, from lesson plan ideas to problem-solving collaboration, she was hooked. She has joined the #edchat/EdCamp professional learning community and now takes the opportunity to help her fellow librarians and educators develop their skills and knowledge through technology sharing.