Sacred+Cows+Among+the+Weeds

by Mark Ray

According to Robert Kriegel’s book of the same name, sacred cows make the best burgers. And our libraries and programs have more blessed bovines than Uttar Pradesh. Many stubborn habits, traditions and bits of conventional wisdom pervade our library SOPs. And they simply must be re-evaluated in light of our changing clientele and the need for teacher librarians to focus on teaching more than librarian-ing. If we are to be leaders in prototypical 21st century learning environments, our collections, programs and instruction need to be streamlined and aligned with what’s next, not with what used to be. I was struck by Joyce Valenza’s recent blog [|post] in response to AASL’s neo-classical resolution to call us ‘school librarians.’ In her post, she importuned us to unresolve some of the things that we’ve always done. This got me looking around the feedlot to see what else might be fodder for //hackfleisch//.

Having personally dealt with change in all kinds of K-12 library settings, I am intimately familiar with push-back when suggesting changes of policy, procedure and habit. Perhaps we should step away from hamburger-as-leitmotif and seek out a greener metaphor—weeding. Theoretically we all regularly weed our collections. In that process we dispassionately evaluate why a book should be kept on the shelf in the present day even if it was once relevant, timely, heavily used and/or essential. If it isn’t used, out-of-date or poorly aligned with our instructional program, it can and should be considered for de-selection. In looking at our programs and policies, we need an equivalently dispassionate evaluation of the essential //why// we are doing what you’re doing. If the answer is ‘that’s the way it’s always been done,’ we must begin asking why.
 * If that decision is ours to make, make it. It’s our program…we can change it.
 * If the answer is that my boss says so, ask why. The answer is likely built on past practice, convention and/or habit, not out of any formal policy.
 * If the answer is dictated by policy, ask why. If we’re offering to change what we do to improve learning, the other stuff should be negotiable. Different times call for different ways of doing business.
 * More often than not, even if there is a policy, no one will know if we change practice or stop doing something. Most library programs toil blithely outside of administrative interest anyway. If a policy falls in our library, will anybody hear?

Why is it necessary to streamline the way we work? Because our patrons are fundamentally different than those we had just ten years ago. Our schools need us to be technology and information coaches to colleagues and teachers to students. We need to step outside of our libraries, both literally and figuratively. Because if we don’t change the way we do business, we’ll be looking into the grinder ourselves.

Policies and procedures ripe for weeding
 * 1) **Inventory**. As Joyce Valenza suggested, do it every other year. If the books are lost, they’ll stay lost. Confirmation of that fact will only make us cranky.
 * 2) **Not checking out books to kids with overdues**. If we’re fighting to keep kids reading (particularly at secondary levels), why say no? If they don’t bring them back at the end of the year, then you can nick them with a fine.
 * 3) **Buying new print non-fiction reference**. Really. Think about it. Does its lack of full-text searchability, format hostile to millennial users and poor ADA-compliance really justify spending money that could be used for eBooks, databases or new technology for our space? Spend money on new picture books, manga or vampire novels. They’ll get used.
 * 4) **Reference sections**. Interfile. Let go of the funky circulation periods and call numbers. Check them out. In the rare event we get a kid that wants to use print non-fiction in our library, are we really willing to make them go to two different places in our library to find it…and then tell them they can’t check it out?
 * 5) **Dewey Decimal**. No, I’m not advocating repealing that [|kook]’s classification system. But we might think twice about subjecting kids to anything more than a cogent discussion of classification. And if we’re still drilling and killing our students with Dewey activities, we need to stop. Put away the well-worn lesson plan. Teach them how to power search in Google instead.
 * 6) **Subscriptions**. Habit is not a good reason to re-up each year. If the newspaper, magazine, database, software or service is not getting used, stop buying it. If the cost has become prohibitive for digital subscriptions, give the rep a call and insist on a lower price. Play one vendor off another. It’s a competitive marketplace.
 * 7) **Shelf-checking**. Time spent putting shelves in anything other than reasonable order could be spent working with students, teachers or colleagues. If we have clerks, volunteers or students shelve books, don’t sweat the details. If we must, do a shelf read twice a year. If we don’t feel the need, don’t.
 * 8) **Reading aloud**. Yes, it’s a nice thing. Just like Mr. Rogers and a cold PBR. Both should be consumed in moderation. Ask yourself two questions: Can this task be done by someone else? And Is this what I want people to see me doing as a teacher librarian?
 * 9) **Believing Wikipedia is evil**. It’s pretty good most of the time. We’re probably the only one in our library with issues with it. The rest of the world thinks it’s the best thing since the café latte. Join the crowd.
 * 10) **Our book fetish**. The fate of books will be decided by forces far more powerful than AASL resolutions. We can continue to love the paperback or our library of oft-used National Geographics. What we do in the privacy of our own homes and/or Barcalounger is our business. But we need to stop acting like librarians and blindly defending a format that doesn’t play nice in the digital sandbox.
 * 11) **Cataloging and classification**. Let the Library of Congress spend taxpayer money on //reductio ad absurdum// analytics. In a K-12 setting, just borrow somebody else’s cataloging or subscribe to a bibliographic service to create good enough MARC records. Trust me, they’ll be good enough. No one’s reading our non-fiction anyway.
 * 12) **Sorting things**. Librarians are good at sorting, organizing and retaining. If we weren’t originally drawn to the job for this, we quickly learned to love it. We are called upon to organize textbooks, library books, videos and any number of other things. Fine. Just don’t let this fill your day. Two more questions: What could I be doing with kids while I’m obsessing over this project? And how does this filing/sorting/organizing project impact student learning? Put simply—teach more; sort less.
 * 13) **Waiting for the ‘stars’ to come out**. With no disrespect intended toward //Booklist// or their ilk, if we wait until we consult reviews for books to get into your library, we’ll leave your patrons hanging. Yes, we need quality books on our shelves…yesterday. Take the P-card or PO to a favorite bookstore and get the books that your kids are requesting. We can backfill with modern classics tomorrow.
 * 14) **Managing AV equipment**. Cue up your favorite country-western song. Now brand them dogies with a barcode and send ‘em out to the range, checked out to teachers, wings or programs. Then leave them there. Do an inventory every now and then. But don’t do a round up every year.
 * 15) **Wearing comfortable shoes**. As I put the last item on the weeding cart, I realize it’s both the most abstract and the most important. On the literal level, image is everything. And the school library is frankly dowdy, predictable and endangered. Riffing on some recent comments of Mike Eisenberg, our brand is bland. We need to go out and buy some unreasonable shoes and a conceptual makeover to go with it. On the figurative level, we are way too comfortable. We hunker down in our spaces disbelieving that anyone would think schools don’t need libraries or librarians anymore. And that is dead wrong. Thousands of our colleagues no longer working in libraries will nod in agreement. Setting aside my initial analogy, I’ll use the less violent alternative—we are being weeded. Right now. But it smells like hamburger.

What are the goals of this weeding? Teaching. Coaching. Collaborating. Stepping outside of our spaces and comfort zones and working in a computer lab or classroom. Learning a new technology not because the district is offering a class but because all your kids are talking about it and we can teach ourselves on YouTube. Yes I know that managing and administrating stuff is almost always more straightforward than working with people. Books don’t talk back or ask difficult questions.

Now that I’ve started filling the weeding cart and invited the wrath of my colleagues, the coast is clear. I would invite you to suggest other library policies, procedures and habits that might warrant reconsideration. We don’t have to pass final judgment, but it doesn’t hurt to put it on a cart and think about it. Pop over to the discussion column and weigh in.