At a minimum, learners and teachers should collaborate with librarians to design the places, collections and services of the library.
Planning with the entire community helps to make the library a welcoming, active space for learning, research, and reflection…
It is important that librarians do not find themselves undervalued or isolated from the school community, which can happen if the system is not designed to play an active role in energizing the curriculum. Librarians should be included in planning, teaching and learning to the greatest effect, rather than being “the last people to know” what is going on in the school.
Ideal libraries: A guide for schools (International Baccalaureate)
Consider the six roles the IB has identified as archetypes of modern librarian role. Then compare L&D’s re-visioning for 70/20/10 and other changes. Here we have traditional support roles desperate for ‘a place at the top table’ as I’ve discussed before.
Added later: After working in the library area again for the first time in a while it really strikes me how much of the library discourse in on rules, regulations, security, etc. This is in part why I looked to move away from libraries originally, that the focus is too often not on the actual outcomes – in academic libraries that learning and research actually happens! In some ways this is comparable to L&D – with both having to wear more hats than they would have traditionally:
I’ve learned a lot for my current role from an excellent couple of networking groups (one a Facebook group the other a more formal site using their own version of Moodle). Neither of these sites are provided by my organisation or an L&D team, these are prime examples of informal Personal Learning Networks contributing to performance. They are point of need Q&A channels beyond what any bot could provide – as they offer advice and ideas from outside of your organisation – a combination of “how do others do this” and “help please!” Often when we think about the support services we provide we think we can do this via support resources, often we simply have no access to the people our people really need – peers outside the organisation.
Whose Education Is It Anyway? 