I believe a librarian’s number one job is to foster an environment where a student feels welcomed and encouraged to have a lifelong love of reading and learning.  My love of reading is one of the main reasons I have chosen this career path. I want to guide and inspire students to also gain love and appreciation for books, literature, reading, and learning.

As a library media specialist, I also believe the core of my job is to provide anyone and everyone with open access to the knowledge they seek. I want students to feel free to learn in the way they understand best and also to explore more ways to obtain knowledge.  Many struggling students just need to be guided in different ways and to feel they have a stake in their own learning in order to have success. I feel librarians have more freedom than classroom teachers to aid students in this exploration by implementing more inquiry process activities.  “Learners develop trust and thrive in an effective school library that gives them freedom to move through the inquiry in a barrier-free, universally designed environment” (AASL, 2018, 73). 

One of my strongest beliefs is that the library is the heart of a school because it can serve as a home base for all levels of the school. I believe it should provide opportunities for collaboration across the curriculum and also expand the students’ learning to go beyond both the curriculum and the physical walls of the building. This can be achieved by working with community members and business owners, local museums, and virtually anyone who can help to foster student learning and meet their specific needs.  

I have an obligation and “professional responsibility to be inclusive in collection development and in the provision of the interlibrary loan” (AASL, 2018, 247). As a librarian, my job is to have frequent examinations of how I organize and present library materials.  This needs to happen based on current events and also on the current population I serve.  As Sanchez stated, “familiarizing oneself with the socio-historical context of a particular school and its library is essential in knowing whom you are serving and how best to do it” (Sanchez, 2018, 28). Ranganathan agreed with this thought as he too states, “librarians should have first-hand knowledge of the people the library served, that collections should meet the special interests of the community” (Rubin,536). If I fail to recognize my community’s needs, then I fail as a librarian. 

References:

AASL. (2018) The national school library standards for learners, school librarians, and school libraries. Chicago, IL: ALA.

Rubin, R. (2016). Foundations of Library and Information Science (4th ed.). Chicago, IL: ALA Neal-Schuman.

Sanchez, J. (2018). “What Are They Doing, Like, In A Library?”: Mexican American Experiences In Their High School Library:  Understand How School Libraries Can Support Institutional and Historical Racism.  Young Adult Library Services, 16 (4), 26-29.