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Advocate for the necessity of the school library and it's benefits to the entire community

Remain active throughout campus and the community

Continue to collaborate with teachers in the classrooms

Educate colleagues on current and ever evolving digital technologies

Work with district and site faculty members to ensure the library and it's services meet with students needs, and carries out site and district vision

Regularly communicate with parents to keep them up to date, and include them in library programs

Build and maintain community partnerships to garner feedback and help with library services

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A collection of resources curated by Shannon McClintock Miller to help librarians learn how to lead beyond on the library.

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Collections by Follett is a new, collaborative way for educators to collect and share resources from anywhere, at any time, and with anyone.

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This article by Mary Ann Wolf, Rachel Jones, and Daniel Gilbert discusses the many roles of a school librarian in the FRL framework. Their articles provides ways that librarians can become leaders in their district through education, collaboration, and by advocating.
https://all4ed.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/BeyondTheLibrary.pdf

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The New Librarian: Leaders in the Digital Age

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The New Librarian: Leaders in the Digital Age

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This article published through Digital Project is part of a series of case studies. This article discusses how Vancouver Public Schools have demonstrated leading beyond the library through promoting digital literacy.

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Part of a series of case studies produced by Digital Promise examining the work of members in our League of Innovative Schools. Click here for more info on the League. To stay up to date on future case studies, sign up for our email newsletter.
Location: Vancouver, WA

Enrollment: 22,192 students

Superintendent: Steven Webb

Per-pupil funding: $7,447

Low Income: 53%

As school districts confront budget constraints and cuts, one of the first places administrators often look for savings is the school library. Numerous districts, large and small, have cut librarian staffing to half-time or eliminated positions entirely. The number of school librarians dropped almost 8 percent to barely 50,000 between 2007 and 2011, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That's one for every two schools.

These cuts can impact both students and teachers. Libraries may remain open, but they lack trained educators to support students. This despite a technological landscape that makes information literacy more important than ever. Student research increasingly occurs outside of the library and with the advent of digital content, new standards, and 1:1 computing, teachers need librarians to help navigate these new choices.

For these reasons, Vancouver Public Schools in Vancouver, Washington, is investing in its librarians while others are cutting back.

A cohort of 33 teacher-librarians is viewed as indispensable to the district's vision of a technology-infused path to improved outcomes for students. After the community passed a $24 million technology levy in 2013, the district began its weLearn 1:1 initiative, which by 2017 will provide all teachers and students in grades 3-12 with an electronic device in a flexible learning environment, and a personalized digital curriculum.

Teacher-librarians at VPS play a crucial role in this digital transformation and other strategic initiatives. As a result, they are expanding their role to spend more time in the classroom, curating digital content and lesson plans with teachers, teaching digital citizenship to students, and even emerging as technology experts within their schools.

VPS Superintendent Steve Webb considers teacher-librarians among the district's visionaries. Their story offers a blueprint for maximizing the impact of libraries and librarians on student learning.

Reasserting Relevance

While VPS has historically supported school libraries and librarians, the district still has faced difficult decisions. Vancouver is not a wealthy district; in a diverse, blue-collar community, more than half of its 23,000 students qualify for free or reduced-price meals.

A decade ago, after several librarians retired and the district's budget continued to tighten, it considered not filling positions at several elementary schools. At the time, librarians reported feeling out of the loop and disconnected from district leaders.

The teacher-librarian cohort banded together and came up with a plan to reassert their relevance in the district. Mark Ray, a high school librarian, was tapped to lead the cohort and better understand how librarians could fulfill the district's strategic goals (Ray is now the district's director of instructional technology and library services). For the first time, district leaders and librarians were in the same room, talking about topics of shared interest and importance, Ray says. Those conversations led to significant increases in responsibility for teacher-librarians, from digital literacy to support of instructional quality.
New roles for teacher-librarians in Vancouver

Leading digital citizenship

Guiding digital content decisions

Coaching teachers in educational technology

Building new courses

Curating educational resources

Teaching beyond the library

Supporting 1:1 implementations

Promoting Common Core

To replenish the talent pipeline for librarians, the district worked with nearby Portland State University to offer a one-year library certification program for educators as they worked as librarians. VPS also bolstered professional development, with Layne Curtis, the district's director of curriculum and instruction, and its former chief information officer, Lisa Greseth, leading efforts to involve teacher-librarians in key projects.

In 2007, teacher-librarians were heavily involved in a district-wide conversion to textbook automation and tracking. In 2008, teacher-librarians led the building- and classroom-level implementation of an educational video-on-demand service.

As these efforts began to prove effective, teacher-librarians increasingly assumed strategic leadership roles in their own buildings and on local and state committees. This tact aligns with Superintendent Webb's push to widen his circle of instructional leaders and foster ubiquitous leadership throughout the district.

Ray is a primary example of this, as a former teacher-librarian now working as a leader in the central office. The 2012 Washington State Teacher of the Year - the first librarian to win the award - Ray is a leading voice on how librarians can reinvent their roles.

In his view, the profession has changed significantly from when he began as a school librarian. In the past, many educators "ran to the library to get away from the classroom, to get away from kids, to get away from grading, to have order, to control their own domain, to have something that's relatively immutable," Ray said. "That's what the library of 25 years ago was. None of those things hold true anymore. You have to be open-minded, outgoing, flexible, be a change agent, and cultivate relationships with other people."

"It would be a horribly boring position if I sat in here all day and just checked books in and out. You aren't just the keeper of books now. You're the keeper of information."
Traci Chun, Teacher-Librarian, Skyview High School

Emerging as Leaders
What's in a name?
The term ' teacher-librarian ' is widely used in Washington state in lieu of school librarian or library media specialist. This title is part of Washington state statute and acknowledges the core teaching role of librarians in addition to library management.

Ray understands the value that teacher librarians can bring to the table. "By virtue of their training, relationships, systems knowledge and instructional roles ... teacher librarians are ideally suited to lead, teach, and support students and teachers in 21st-century schools," he says.

As such, VPS teacher-librarians are designated trainers for a new online teacher evaluation system in Washington state and are adapting that evaluation and instructional framework to their new and emerging role in the classroom.

Ron Wagner, the teacher-librarian at Felida Elementary School, is one of 15 teacher-librarians tapped by the Washington Library Media Association to help schools adapt to the Common Core State Standards. He leads day-long workshops to train other teacher-librarians as leaders for adopting the standards within their buildings and districts.

It is a natural fit for teacher-librarians, Wagner says. The workshops focus on how to teach students to understand complex texts, read for information, and conduct research.

"We said, 'Wow! This is stuff we already do,'" Wagner says. "Now we can make ourselves more relevant in our buildings by getting out and saying, 'Hey, you guys seem overwhelmed by this new thing. We can help.'"

"We know that if you put these kind of digital tools into classrooms and do not support them in the right way, it won't result in improved student learning outcomes. Just deploying a whole bunch of hardware and software into schools isn't going to translate into performance."
Steve Webb, Superintendent, Vancouver Public Schools

Many teacher-librarians say they now feel connected to something bigger than their own school, namely the strategic plan to redesign instruction across the district.

"If decisions are being made, we're involved," said Angela Vahsholtz-Andersen, teacher-librarian at Discovery Middle School and a former English teacher.

For instance Traci Chun, teacher-librarian at Skyview High School, is on a panel that designed the district's new social studies curriculum. Chun is an example of how the gap between librarian and classroom instructor is closing. She spends about half of her time in the classroom, co-teaching with other faculty, leading in-class lessons, and teaching research skills to students in social studies, language arts, and chemistry.

"It's important for students to see me outside the library so they understand, 'Oh, she's a teacher just like my classroom teacher,'" Chun says.

Her interaction with teachers is also changing. In the past, the conversation began with "I need resources. Give me a cart of books." Now it is 'Will you come in and teach with me?"

Some of the mainstays of the job remain. Librarians still introduce students to literature, manage book circulation, and in many cases manage a computer lab. But that is becomingly an increasingly smaller part of the job, Chun says.

"It would be a horribly boring position if I sat in here all day and just checked books in and out," Chun says. "You aren't just the keeper of books now. You're the keeper of information."

Rising to the 1:1 Challenge

VPS has always been open to innovation and eager to harness technology to improve instruction. A member of the National School Board Association's Technology Leadership Network for more than two decades, by the mid-1990s VPS boasted one computer for every four students, nearly five times the U.S. average. In 2008, the district began a five-year strategic plan called "Design II." One of the goal areas for the plan is the creation of 21st-century flexible learning environments, a prelude to weLearn in expanding digital access to students.

The district also boasts nationally recognized magnet schools. At Vancouver Schools of Arts and Academics, students access industry-standard stage production equipment, a recording studio, and film production suites. Skyview School offers an engineering academy within a comprehensive high school. In recent years, the district opened iTech Preparatory and Lewis and Clark High School, which both reimagine traditional ideas of school time and space through competency-based 1:1 learning environments and teacher mentoring. The nature of these programs requires support for teachers and students that create unique roles for librarians.

"It's much more of an active role. No longer do they wait for a question. They anticipate the needs. Their place is with the learners in the moment of learning, be that adults or students."
Christina Iremonger, Principal, iTech Preparatory

"We know that if you put these kind of digital tools into classrooms and do not support them in the right way, it won't translate into student learning outcomes," Webb says. "Just deploying a whole bunch of hardware and software into schools isn't going to translate into performance."

To that end, VPS is taking a deliberate approach to weLearn. Device rollout for the district's 23,000 students is staged over six years.

By design, teacher-librarians are playing an important role in implementation. And while they have received technology training for the last five years, the iPads posed new challenges for them.

Some were early adopters who owned smartphones for years and purchased their own iPads right after they came out in 2010. For others, the iPad was a new experience. Machelle Whitney and Peggy Hanes, the teacher-librarians at McLoughlin and Alki Middle Schools, respectively, fell into the latter category.

Whitney and Hanes' schools are among the first to go 1:1 and thus were "first to get hit by the tsunami," Ray says. "They are dealing with it in very different ways, but responding to it very well."

Whitney, who did not own a smartphone, called herself "very much a card catalog-, print book-" librarian. "I first touched an iPad in July when I went to training. I had to take deep breaths and I still do." Before the 2013-14 school year, she sought training on her own and participated in a summer iPad institute for teachers at her school. That "relieved my own worst case fears," said the former science teacher. Because of her preparation and because of her trial by fire, she now regularly troubleshoots iPad problems for students and classroom teachers alike.

Hanes, a librarian for more than two decades, plays a different support role in her school. "Our staff is young and very tech-savvy. They don't tend to come to me very much," she says. Requests for book carts have also dropped off to "basically zero." Instead she's found her niche in supporting students in their digital learning.

Hanes is thrilled when she looks out at students' busily working on their iPads instead of the library's bank of old desktops. "The amount of engagement is off the charts. Kids are teaching each other," she said. Before they'd sit in the computer lab "and there they'd stay. With the iPad, they're mobile."

Teacher-librarians now receive annual training in instructional technology leadership and going forward are considered key points of contact for schools introducing new technology. It is the latest evolution in VPS teacher-librarians reinventing their role several years removed from avoiding having their positions cut.

Even before the new iPads and laptops arrived, teacher-librarians were the ones principals counted on to spearhead efforts to teach students digital citizenship. Now, with students' doing more and more work online, in computer labs, at home, and in classrooms, the teacher-librarians' role as digital mavens is even more important. They are no longer isolated behind the library walls.

Rethinking Library Spaces

While Vancouver's teacher-librarians may represent a new breed, changes to the district's library spaces are changing more slowly across its buildings.

Some libraries are enclosed. Others occupy open spaces in common learning areas. Print encyclopedias still occupy space on the shelves and computer labs have not yet given way to mobile technology. Early shifts in the library program and collections are underway.

Ironically, what Vancouver views as a potential prototype for its future school library opened in 1995. That year, the district opened Discovery Middle School to support project-based learning. The library was part of a large, well-lit, and flexible space called the "Toolbox" that houses computer and science labs and an adjacent pottery room.

With some modifications to account for mobile devices and more collaborative space, the library could resemble "maker spaces," which foster hands-on, multi-modal learning and creation.

"Teachers love this space," said Vahsholtz-Andersen, the teacher-librarian at Discovery.

Columbia River's big media center is crammed with tables and bookcases but Shana Ferguson, the school's new librarian, says a planned redesign will make it amenable to many uses that take advantage of the library's role as a common meeting place.

"A lot of students do need this space," Ferguson says. "We have the reliable internet access they need. We're sort of a full service research hub/Kinko's." One thing on her must-have list: more electric outlets for students to plug in their laptops and devices.

At schools already embracing a mobile, tech-integrated learning environment, like iTech Preparatory Academy, libraries are difficult to recognize. The STEM academy features two sites - a standalone middle school and high school co-located at Washington State University-Vancouver.

In the middle school, the library consists of a table and several kiosks of books in a hallway. At the high school, teacher-librarian Katie Nedved works out of a corner of what is primarily the lunchroom. With this arrangement, students can access resources during leisure time (hence the proximity to the lunchroom) or, when the cafeteria is empty, there is ample space to work in small groups. With each student owning her own laptop, a full-scale library space isn't needed. iTech offers just 800 print books, mostly print counterparts to digital content the district offers.

Nedved, a former math teacher, came to Vancouver in 2013 from a small, nearby district that was eliminating its three library positions. She splits her time between iTech Prep and Lewis and Clark, a 1:1 school with a flexible schedule and open floor plan. The library there consists mostly of a cluster of shelves to hold its book circulation of about 7,000.

"I feel like my focus is organizing the online digital tools, which are so much vaster," she said. "Although I would love to have a full library, this actually works for the type of work I'm doing."

For Nedved - who, for all intents and purposes, is a librarian without a library - it is natural to view her role non-traditionally: mentoring students one-on-one, teaching digital citizenship, and helping both teachers and students curate the vast array of digital resources available online.

"It's much more of an active role," says Christina Iremonger, the principal of iTech Preparatory. "No longer do they wait for a question. They anticipate the needs. Their place is with the learners in the moment of learning, be that adults or students."

In the year iTech opened without a teacher-librarian, logs showed that students accessed the library's digital resources and databases only 400 times. In Nedved's first year, after showing students how much information was available to them, they logged on more than 7,200 times before springtime.

As the district moves forward, Ray says changes in teacher-librarians' role are what will ultimately influence changes to the library space.

"What we need to do first is redefine what teacher-librarians are doing to support student learning," said Ray.

Helping Navigate the Noise

With student research moving online and VPS progressing through its weLearn 1:1 initiative, school librarians have also emerged as key advocates for digital citizenship.

"We're committed to teaching students about digital citizenship and being good consumers of digital content," said Webb, the superintendent. "That doesn't mean a 14-year-old won't push boundaries, but we have systems and structures in place so when that does occur, we seize upon that as a teachable moment."

Like many districts, Vancouver employs policies to meet district, state and federal guidelines, and uses filters that apply to school and home technology use. Currently students cannot access Facebook and YouTube on school devices, or play games and download music. (Restrictions like these are common on most school computers. A 2012 survey by the American Association of School Libraries found that 88 percent use filters to block social media sites, 74 percent prevent instant messaging and online chats, and 66 percent cut off access to YouTube.)

Filters and policies only go so far, however, so to prepare students for college, career and life beyond high school, digital citizenship is an explicit component of VPS' flexible learning environments. Teacher-librarians completed a gap analysis to identify resources, develop a scope and sequence, and recommend policies and principles to the district. In addition to a focus on cyberbullying, students learn about online safety, digital identity and data security.

In collaboration with teachers, librarians create digital citizenship lessons and adapt curriculum developed by Common Sense Media, a non-profit organization that helps children and families consume and create technology responsibly.

Vahsholtz-Andersen at Discovery helped lead the districts' work on digital citizenship, shaping plans so teachers, students, and their families can "start figuring out what they need to know to use the power that's being placed in students' hands."

When Ferguson teaches research skills to students at Columbia River, for example, she exhorts them to "break the Google habit" and dig deeper into databases such as Questia for more sophisticated and better answers.

"We're fighting that," Ferguson says. "Students want immediate information. They feel like Google has it when that isn't necessarily the case."

A New Outlook for Libraries

In his blog called the Librarian-Provocateur and in columns in School Library Journal and Teacher Librarian, Mark Ray advocates for librarians to recognize the need to remake their jobs, programs, and spaces for the 21st century.

Ray said it has taken nearly a decade for teacher-librarians to get to where they are in Vancouver. It has been a long process of "changing hearts and minds," he said. "My strategy has been advocacy based on results rather than on some platonic form of what the library should be," he said. "It's not waving a flag for school libraries. It's about how they support student learning."

Vancouver is not alone in recognizing the critical role of teacher-librarians. Both at the state and national level, districts are increasingly promoting and investing in school libraries. Thanks in part to increased funding in Washington state, Bellevue School District, which cut high school librarians several years ago, has rewritten the job description to better align to district needs and is hiring more teacher-librarians. For the last several sessions of the Washington Legislature, teacher-librarians have crafted legislation to link school libraries to reform efforts.

At the national level, Follett's Project Connect has brought together both educational and library leaders to articulate the ways in which school libraries support 21st century schools. As part of this team, Ray has presented to both administrative and library audiences, sitting alongside like-minded superintendents, librarians, and other educational leaders.

While there is ample anecdotal evidence that teacher-librarians are positively impacting what happens in schools and the district, translating that into empirical and systemic success requires a new way of measuring their work. In the past year, VPS has worked to apply the district's instructional framework to librarians. Next year, a new evaluation system will be put in place.

Overall, Vancouver is like other districts in that it sees technology as an opportunity to empower learning for all students and overcome some chronic barriers to success. Given the infancy of Vancouver's instructional and technology initiatives, it is too early to say whether the iPads and laptops are meeting these goals, or what the results will look like when both students and teachers have years of experience with them in the classroom.

Webb thinks it will take three or four years for technology to transform the classroom, but he sees early indicators that things are moving in the right direction. Student engagement is up, absenteeism and disciplinary problems are down. In a city with wealth and poverty, Webb believes these digital learning tools "have the potential to be the great equalizer in public education."

Vancouver Public Schools is counting on teacher-librarians to help make that happen.

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The New Librarian: Leaders in the Digital Age - Digital Promise

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Part of a series of case studies produced by Digital Promise examining the work of members in our League of Innovative Schools. Click here for more info on the League. To stay up to date on future case studies, sign up for our email newsletter.

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Martin Wolske's blog focuses on how librarians are leaders in community engagement, as well as instructors for the community.

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A number of past American Library Association (ALA) presidents have had initiatives related in some way to libraries and community/civic engagement. The 2012 ALA president, Maureen Sullivan, helped to lead a successful Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant proposal to work with the Harwood Institute to advance library-led community engagement. I strongly agree the library is an essential community-based resource helping to transform communities, and that this requires more than just service to the community, but engagement with the community. The full ethos of the library should be centered upon engagement, especially focused around its core of information and knowledge power, something that only is developed through transformative action within community.

But as I continue to reflect upon the extreme challenges of technology and digital literacy development fostering on social justice within such a profoundly and thoroughly thing- and individual-centered culture, I'm coming to appreciate the considerable danger such a library-focused framing brings. Could it be that within the context of a thing-oriented culture, this statement can be mistaken with the statement made within the Microsoft Empowerment commercial (38 seconds in) "Technology has taken us places we only dream." - Libraries take us places we only dream. No, no, no!

People dream, and people work to achieve those dreams. Along the way they create, re-create, and co-create technologies to use as tools to help people carry out their initiatives. In that vein, the library should be an essential tool, regularly re- and co-created, to help community carry out their initiatives for transformative action and community power through information gathering and knowledge creation.

The ALA presidents understand quite well that the library doesn't magically do this, but that it is the librarians, library staff, friends of the library, the library board, and the broader citizenry that make up the library and see to it that the library-as-people engage so as to transform communities. But in a tech-centric culture, it's too easy to have the phrase library-led community engagement be mistaken for the need to prioritize the infrastructure and not the people.

So I am starting to instead think about librar engagement leaders. Admittedly, the danger then becomes an individual focus instead of a community focus. So at the outset, let me clarify that while there is real value in having librarians embedded within non-library organizations, I am talking here about librarian engagement leaders working within a library that has an institutional focus of engagement because of the shared value placed upon engagement by the librarians, staff, friends, trustees, and patrons of the library.

I appreciate a recent conversation with Kirstin Phelps regarding leader vs. leadership role. Rather than focusing on the "born leader", we can consider ways in which everyone can and should play a leadership role in building and transforming community to be inclusive, empowering, and just (my understanding of her words). Bringing in work by David Weerts and Lorilee Sandmann (2010) regarding engaged universities and boundary spanning, the engagement leadership role of some librarians will be more community focused, while for others it will be more library focused, some more technical/practical, and some more socio-emotional. The figure to the right is my mapping of engagement leadership roles for the engaged library onto Weerts and Sandmann's figure they developed for the engaged university.

Often times, and perhaps primarily, the librarian engagement leadership role is to build the leadership roles of others. Librarians, staff, volunteers, board members, friends of the library, and the patrons of the library, together as "the library", don't take direct, primary/exclusive responsibility for all aspects of building and transforming community. Rather, the people who function as the library provide critical services to facilitate those who are working in various ways to exercise their leadership roles to build and transform communities. Reflecting on this further, I'm coming to appreciate that even then, these other leadership roles are really just further examples of supporting the leadership roles of still others.

For instance, consider a community group who regularly uses the library to organize around a development goal, investigate that goal, and use the resources of the library to implement components of that goal. A librarian may practice their engagement leadership role to support some or all of these different community activities, and in so doing foster the ability for the members of the community group to achieve their leadership roles. But it's easy to imagine that one common development goal of community groups might be to help support the leadership roles of others in the community, say for instance when teachers, parents, local business owners, and concerned citizens come together to champion new in- and after-school programming to foster student leadership roles.

This leads to one other important consideration - with whom does engagement occur? In " Confronting the Future: Strategic visions for the 21st century public library" a policy brief published by the ALA Office for Information Technology, author Levien helpfully distinguishes the individual- vs community-focused library. Services to, or engagement with, individuals is not community engagement. In the community library, the "physical library becomes, even more than is the case today, a center for a wide range of community activities...In addition to these basic facilities, a physical library focused on the local community would offer a range of other services, depending on the community's desires [emphasis added]."

However, even here we must be careful because too often community is used too loosely or broadly. As Randy Stoecker states in his 2014 article " What If? ":

The word community has been misused to the point where it means everything-a workplace can be a community, a city can be a community, an interest group can be a community, even the whole world can be a community. When a word is used to refer to everything, it no longer means anything.

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A number of past American Library Association (ALA) presidents have had initiatives related in some way to libraries and community/civic engagement. The 2012 ALA president, Maureen Sullivan, helped to lead a successful Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant proposal to work with the Harwood Institute to advance library-led community engagement.

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Links to resources provided by the American Library Association to help librarians become leaders.

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This resource list represents leadership development training opportunities for library professionals at all levels and specialties within the library community.

Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and Harvard University, Graduate School of Education
Leadership Training: ACRL/Harvard Advanced Leadership Institute for Senior Academic Librarians

The Advanced Leadership Institute for Senior Academic Librarians enables senior library leaders to better understand and respond to a complicated set of leadership challenges facing academic libraries. The institute reviews foundational concepts from LIAL, applies them to the dynamic competitive environment now facing libraries and extends them to the leadership challenges confronting the 21st century library. The institute creates a highly-interactive and engaging learning environment that will strengthen your strategic leadership skills, enhance your ability to forge effective partnerships and help you better understand how to position the library for future success.

The ALA Emerging Leaders (EL) program is a leadership development program which enables newer library workers from across the country to participate in problem-solving work groups, network with peers, gain an inside look into ALA structure, and have an opportunity to serve the profession in a leadership capacity. It puts participants on the fast track to ALA committee volunteerism as well as other professional library-related organizations.

ARL's Leadership Development initiatives assist research libraries to meet the instructional and research needs of higher education. In 2006-07, an ARL Board Task Force on Leadership Development identified executive leadership development and succession planning in research libraries as priority activities. A limited number of leadership and management skills training events are available only to member libraries on demand.

The Institute's mission is to assist future leaders to recognise and develop their leadership abilities. The Aurora Foundation seeks to position leaders as dynamic and effective voices in our sophisticated information environment. They are the principal opportunity for those in the Australian and New Zealand library profession, and others from associated information industries, to explore leadership concepts and their own potential.

California State Library, in partnership with Infopeople
Leadership Training: Eureka! Leadership Program: Discover the Leader Within

The California State Library, in partnership with Infopeople, is pleased to offer an exciting professional development initiative - the Eureka! Leadership Program: Discover the Leader Within. The Program has been designed for professional librarians with between three and ten years of professional library experience, but is also open to those in library management positions who do not have an MLS. The Program is looking for California library staff who exhibit leadership potential and are willing to share with others their enthusiasm, optimism, and vision for future library services.

Provides a unique opportunity for professional librarians to share with peers and mentors a five day experiential and theoretical learning situation in Canada. Participants will explore and experiment with such leadership concepts as vision, risk taking, creativity, communication, change, power, and styles of leadership -- all to be done within a context of self-exploration, evaluation and development. The Institute will also provide an opportunity for those attending to develop integrated professional networks.

The primary goal of the Institute is to assist in preparing library leaders to provide the highest quality library services to the citizens of Florida in the most effective and innovative manner that will meet today's needs and tomorrow's challenges.

The Illinois Library Leadership Initiative is the statewide library community's proactive movement to recruit and nurture future Illinois library leaders. Objectives include self-assessment; discovering and developing personal values; identifying the local, state and global environment; fostering and expanding skills and tools for personal, professional and positional leadership; creating a cohort group; establishing mentoring relationships; and developing a vision of and beyond the field of librarianship

The Iowa Library Association has established a comprehensive leadership development program to ensure that its members are prepared to actively shape the future of Iowa libraries. An ILA member (may be MLS or non-MLS) working in any Iowa library. A total of 25 individuals will be selected to attend the institute. At the institute you will participate in activities designed to help you: recognize yourself as a leader and develop the confidence to become a change agent in your library as well as in the larger community, assess your personal leadership style and develop the skills to use that style for effective decision making, seek creative solutions to shape the future of the Iowa Library Association and library service in Iowa, and connect to a supportive network of successful library leaders.

Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners and the Massachusetts Regional Library Systems
Leadership Training: Library Leadership Massachusetts (LLMA)

Participants are practitioners of library science or library advocates with fewer than ten years in their roles.LLMA takes place on alternate years, with the next event planned for 2011. The Institute was federally funded in part by LSTA funds administered through the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners. It was implemented by the six MA Regional Library Systems with a coordinating committee of LLMA alumnae.

The Michigan Library Association's Leadership Academy is an intensive, experiential and focused program to prepare individuals for leadership roles within MLA, as well as prepare them for leadership roles within the library workplace.

The Tribal College Librarians Professional Development Institute is held annually at Montana State in Bozeman and has promoted professional development activities for tribal college librarians. At the present, the institute is defined specifically for librarians at tribally-affiliated institutions with a post-secondary primary clientele.

The purpose of this symposium is to foster the mentoring and development of leaders in state and regional library associations. NELLS students will be library professionals, paraprofessionals, or volunteers (trustees, friends, etc.) in mid-career (3-15 years experience in or with libraries). The attendees may be recommended by someone or may make their own application for this leadership training. Each student must be a member of his or her state library association or NELA in order to apply..

The New York Library Association's Library Leadership and Management Academy is an educational program for emerging leaders in the library profession. Participants will gain the skills and knowledge they need to advance up the career ladder in library management. Enrollment in the Library Leadership and Management Academy is limited and enrollees are required to complete ten courses over a three year period to receive a Leadership and Management Academy Certificate.

The Core Purpose of the Leadership Institute is to create excitement, energy, and passion across North Carolina for transforming library customer experiences. The Vision for the Future is to develop entrepreneurial and serving leaders who strategically build and creatively use high performance libraries to make a significant personal impact on customers and deliver measurable value for the communities they serve.

PNLA Leads responds to IMLS Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program Priority 6, Continuing Education, in that it will enhance a fledgling program of continuing leadership education and training for librarians and library staff in the Pacific Northwest. It will provide opportunities for emerging leaders serving in any capacity in a library in the Pacific Northwest with a desire to network with other leaders and increase skills. It will benefit multiple institutions and diverse constituencies, and meet well-understood library service needs in the region's communities, particularly underserved rural settings.

The PaLA Academy of Leadership Studies (PALS) is a cooperative initiative between PaLA and the Office of Commonwealth Libraries to offer leadership development for librarians. The PaLA Leadership Development Committee envisions having a multi-tier approach to leadership development. Ideally, the first tier would focus on new librarians, having worked as a librarian for less than six years. A second tier would focus on librarians who are in management positions and may need to enhance their leadership skills. There would also be a tier for those established leaders who may want to re-think their leadership roles or learn how to serve as mentors for upcoming library leaders. There will also be on line training options, 1-day workshops, and many other opportunities to develop your leadership potential. Obviously, this is a very ambitious goal and is actually several goals which will take place over several years.

The Leadership Institute for Academic Library Managers is offered as a part of Siena College's Institute for Leadership Development (ILD) The purpose of the ILD is to utilize the expertise of Siena faculty members to provide leadership development, strategic planning, team building, communications and executive coaching. With a focus on college and university library setting, this institute is design to help academic librarians build their leadership skills. It provides advanced instruction in management topic relevant to today's libraries, as well as prepares academic librarians to become highly skilled and successful managers.

The program provides leadership training for the Texas Library Association membership by offering an annual Leadership Development Institute for librarians and laypersons.

The Senior Fellows Program is the premier public engagement program of the School of Public Affairs. Each year 8 to 10 distinguished leaders from the public, nonprofit, and private sectors are invited to be Senior Fellows of the school. These accomplished leaders volunteer their time and expertise for the Policy School and its students. The requirements of the Senior Fellowship include delivering a policy briefing on a leadership, management or policy issue in one's area of expertise, and mentoring one or more students.

The University of Wisconsin - Madison is pleased to announce the 2010 leadership institute for archives professionals. The week-long event will feature presentations by dynamic people in the archival field and relevant leaders outside the profession. The goal of the project is to examine the leadership needs of the archives profession and to prepare participants to influence policy and effect change on behalf of the profession (and ultimately, on behalf the public served now and in the future.) The program is directed primarily at mid-level to senior staff --archivists who aspire to leadership roles in their organizations and/or professional associations.

The Institute for Academic Library Leadership focuses on the higher education context in which libraries exist. The institute explores new roles for libraries that may emerge from that context to support the goals and priorities of the parent institution. Participants identify ways to position their libraries to be agents for change within their institutions, in order to strengthen support for the library's services and resources. The institute is highly participative and tailored to the interests of those selected as summer fellows.

The Wyoming Library Leadership Institute operates two institutes. During the even-year summer we will hold the library leadership institute for new attendees. During the odd years we will hold an advanced leadership institute opened to anyone who has attended in the past. The Library Leadership Institute exists to provide opportunities for learning, mentoring and developing leadership skills to promote the personal and professional growth of the Wyoming library community.The institute is a tool for nurturing both degreed and non-degreed individuals in leadership roles. It is not a workshop on becoming a library director or a workshop on library administration.

For additional library leadership resources, you may also want to visit the Library Leadership & Management Association (LLAMA), a division of the American Library Association.

This page is maintained by the ALA Office for Human Resource Development and Recruitment (HRDR) on behalf of the ALA Training, Orientation and Leadership Development (TOLD) Committee. For questions or comments, please contact, Lorelle R. Swader, Director.

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This resource list represents leadership development training opportunities for library professionals at all levels and specialties within the library community. This resource list represents leadership development training opportunities for library professionals at all levels and specialties within the library community.

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 School Librariansas Learning Leaders: An Administrator’s Guide

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 School Librariansas Learning Leaders: An Administrator’s Guide

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A graphic developed by the American Library Association that that provides resources and evidence for how school librarians are teachers and leaders.

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Librarians as Teacher Leaders: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities

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Librarians as Teacher Leaders: Definitions, Challenges, and Opportunities

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A webinar hosted by Bill Bass and Kim Lindskog that discusses their personal experiences for becoming leaders in their school districts, as well as the impact of collaboration in their school communities.

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Leading Beyond the Library | Webinar | Follett

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Classroom Books & Materials Transform your classroom into a learning environment that meets curriculum standards Library Books Build your print and digital collection with Titlewave® Early Learning Encourage young learners to exceed their potential Textbooks Engage your students in active learning with new and pre-owned textbooks Digital Content Engage students with Interactive books, eBooks, Lightbox, and more Makerspace Engage students in STEM creativity and exploration

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From Teacher Librarian to Thought Leader | Take the Lead

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From Teacher Librarian to Thought Leader | Take the Lead

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This article written by Kathleen M. Moore for the School Library Journal, details her experience of advocating to the district and superintendent about library services for gathering funding and staffing, to develop more library programs.

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By Kathleen M. Moore on

As I began my Lilead Fellowship in 2015, collaborating with two dozen powerful library supervisors from across the country, I quickly discovered I wasn't a library supervisor in the traditional sense. My Lilead colleagues held that official position in their respective districts. I, on the other hand, was a curriculum coordinator, responsible for professional development in my suburban California school district.

Here in northern California's San Ramon Valley Unified School District, 12 credentialed teacher librarians and two dozen classified library media coordinators serve more than 32,000 students.

Right from the get-go, I knew I had a lot to learn, and I did. The issues shared by my Lilead colleagues-positive exposure to current library problems and practices, issues and ideas, and structures and solutions-allowed me to craft a transformative vision for our school libraries. The more I learned, the more I became focused on spotlighting our library program. Our district librarians were already doing much to support, promote, and enrich district initiatives. But they were doing it quietly, practically in the shadows. My priority became getting them noticed.

Shining a light

Together, we built a presentation that we shared with administrators and the school board, highlighting librarians' expertise as instructional leaders. The librarians began offering professional development sessions on 21st-century skills, information literacy, and digital citizenship. They initiated book clubs-Kate Roberts and Maggie Beatty Roberts's DIY Literacy: Teaching Tools for Differentiation, Rigor and Independence [Heinemann, 2016] is a current favorite-and facilitated teacher cohorts to research and design curriculum for new programs.

Kerri Pike, our lead high school librarian, used her position on a budget oversight committee to strongly advocate for increased staffing, funding, and resources. She also published Toilet Paper, a monthly library newsletter posted in faculty restrooms. Librarians further increased their visibility by collaborating on a more formal quarterly newsletter distributed district-wide, explicitly connecting their work to district initiatives. And they made a conscious effort to build a strong presence on social media, energizing their Facebook pages, blogs, and Twitter posts.

These past two years we've worked hard to turn "perception = reality" thinking on its head. Our new normal is "reality = perception." We were committed to shifting the impression of the library as a quiet place to study and check out books from a shushing librarian to that of a vibrant learning hub headed by a tech-savvy, future-ready literacy leader. By getting out there-leading workshops, supporting initiatives, publishing newsletters and articles-our librarians gained recognition for the role they play in every aspect of the district's work. Librarians are critical to the success of district initiatives, and implementation of those initiatives is critical to the success of all students.Their increased visibility has transformed the perception of who a librarian is and what a librarian does. These days, they are everywhere, spreading the power of literacy as a tool for equity and social justice. Our librarians know that they are the first line of defense against ignorance and injustice; they promote spaces where all students can develop their passions, access credible resources, be exposed to current social issues, and wrestle with multiple perspectives. These library leaders believe that it is a moral imperative to prepare students to think critically, research ethically, and act with empathy and compassion.

"you don't know what you don't know"

This is strategic positive exposure. We realized that the old adage, you don't know what you don't know, applied to our situation. Until the librarians began garnering repeated positive exposure, they were nearly invisible. Last spring, two of our elementary librarians were nominated as classified employee of the year at their respective sites, the first time in recent memory that someone from the library world has been so recognized. In fact, one was further honored as the district and the county classified employee of the year, another event that had never happened before. While we can't say for sure all of our work toward positive exposure led to the recognition, we can't help but believe it played a role.

The work continues. This year we have a new superintendent who comes from a district that replaced librarians with technicians. He hadn't been privy to the work that our team of thought leaders had been spearheading, and the ways they had transformed teaching and learning. He didn't know the roles they'd played in building maker spaces, teaching coding classes, or supporting a revolutionary new AP seminar and research program.

So they showed him. Teacher librarians met with him to share ideas and artifacts highlighting the transformative work they lead. They invited him to come watch them in action. He listened, paid attention, and asked the right questions. We think he got the picture. Positive exposure matters.
Lilead Fellow Kathleen M. Moore is the curriculum coordinator in the San Ramon Valley Unified School District in northern California and the City of San Ramon's Poet Laureate.

This article was featured in our free Extra Helping enewsletter.
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From Teacher Librarian to Thought Leader | Take the Lead

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By Kathleen M. Moore on As I began my Lilead Fellowship in 2015, collaborating with two dozen powerful library supervisors from across the country, I quickly discovered I wasn't a library supervisor in the traditional sense. My Lilead colleagues held that official position in their respective districts.

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The Librarian as an Instructional Partner

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The Librarian as an Instructional Partner

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Kristen Mattson's blog post describes how the librarian can be an instructional partner and volunteer, by collaborating with fellow teachers and the community to teach inquiry, information and digital literacy,  and curation.

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From Guest Blogger and Future Ready Librarian Kristen Mattson

When I first saw the Alliance for Excellent Education's Future Ready Librarians Framework, I was excited to note the inclusion of "Collaborative Leadership" and "Builds Instructional Partnerships" as descriptors of an excellent school librarian. These are two areas of the job that I enjoy the most, so their inclusion only seemed natural to me. I do recognize, however, that some librarians' strength may lie in other areas of the Framework, like "Budgets and Resources" or "Community Partnerships," and that coming alongside teachers in an instructional partner role might feel a little intimidating. I also recognize that there are many classroom teachers who have never, for whatever reason, been exposed to the power of a collaborative relationship with the school librarian and may not naturally seek him or her out. In this post, I would like to speak to both the classroom teacher and the teacher librarian - giving both groups some ideas for how to form rockstar collaborative relationships that will have a huge impact on student learning.

Classroom teachers: You may be asking yourself what the benefit of partnering with a school librarian for instructional design or lesson delivery might be. While each librarian has his or her own strengths, I think it is pretty safe to say that we are all equipped to help you with:

1. Curation - Librarians are trained to collect, organize, and manage content that is both physical and digital. Have you ever wished you could offer more choice in the classroom but just don't have the time to find relevant, reliable, and on-level articles, websites, or books for your students to choose from? Your school librarian would be an excellent person to approach with your ideas and ask if he/she could help you curate some content for your classroom.

2. Inquiry - Librarians are trained in the research process and practice it daily as they search for materials to support learning. Whether you ask your kids to complete in-depth inquiry tasks that you've created or you find yourself saying things like "just Google it!" in response to student developed inquiries, odds are that your teacher librarian has ideas, resources, and lessons that can help you and your students develop quality research questions, locate information that is relevant, and then synthesize findings to help answer the research question and communicate learning to a specified audience.

3. Information Literacy - Not all information is created equal. Your teacher librarian can show you and your students ways to evaluate the accuracy, relevancy, reliability, authority and validity of the websites you and your students use for information and learning.

4. Digital Literacy - The teacher librarian used to focus on skills like locating books on a shelf, utilizing tables of contents, indexes, and card catalogues. As most of our information has moved into digital formats, however, there are a whole new set of skills that students must possess to access content. Your teacher librarian can help your students master basic and advanced web searches, navigation of academic databases, show them how to download eBooks, and model ways to work with the various file types content is delivered in.

5. Ethical Use of Information - It is increasingly easier to create and share content digitally. As students cut, paste, borrow, remix, remake, and integrate media together into their own creations, they need to understand the legal and ethical issues around the use of other people's multimedia content. In the same regard, students should be educated on ways to protect their own creative works before sharing them. Your teacher librarian can be an excellent source of information on both traditional copyright and Creative Commons Licensing.

Teacher librarians: Once you decide you are ready to start building, or increasing the number of instructional partnerships you have in your building, there are some ways to go about drumming up interest:

1. Visit PLC's and Other Gathering Places - My goal is to visit at least one team's PLC meeting each month, and I usually have to invite myself! The easiest way to do that is just after working with a teacher in their classroom. Ask if you can join the next PLC meeting to engage in a reflective discussion on the unit. This opens up opportunities for you to meet more teachers in the building and for those teachers to hear about the partnerships their colleague has formed with you. If you do not have a formal PLC format in your building, make sure to put yourself where the teachers are - in the staff cafeteria, in department offices, or even in places like the cafeteria or bus line during duty times. The teacher librarian does not make instructional partnerships by sitting behind the circulation desk and waiting to be approached. Get out, make friends, and be willing to jump in when a need arises!

2. Listen with Intent - Whenever I am in whole staff meetings, small group PLCs, or in casual conversations with teachers, I am intently listening for ways to help. While we've all been guilty of tuning out during meetings not directly related to our role, making a deliberate choice to pay close attention is a great way to increase instructional partnerships. When I am in these meetings, I am listening closely for opportunities to share my skills with individuals or teams. Follow up the meeting with a personal conversation or an email detailing the work that needs to be done and the skillsets you can bring to the project. Many hands make for light work, so I am rarely turned down when people realize that I am willing and able to contribute.

3. Volunteer for Committee Work - Some of my best instructional partnerships have been forged through building and district level committee work. If your administrator approaches you with an opportunity to serve on a curriculum or technology team, do your best to clear your calendar and say yes! If you have never been invited into these teams, make sure your administrator knows you are interested in growing this area of professional responsibility.

4. Be An Extra Set of Hands - Oftentimes a teacher does not need assistance in gathering information, learning about a new technology tool, or developing a cool lesson. Sometimes a teacher knows exactly what they want the instruction to look like, but could really use an extra person in the room to help make the magic happen. Serving teachers through your willingness to help in any capacity goes a long way in forging instructional partnerships that will allow you to help integrate library skills and standards into the classroom down the road.

5. Make Your Goals Clear - Whether or not you are in a formal evaluation cycle, there is value in professional goal setting. To say that you want to grow in your instructional partnerships during the next school year is a start, but unless your goals are specific and action oriented, it can be easy to let them slip to the bottom of your priority list. Write a clear goal with a deadline and action steps. For example, "During the month of November, I will work with at least one English teacher on a lesson. To help me achieve this goal, I will visit the English PLC during the month of October to look for opportunities to serve." Then, share this goal with someone at work - your administrator, your library assistant, the secretary you eat lunch with each day. Regardless of who you tell, sharing your goal with someone else adds a layer of accountability and increases the chances of you meeting it. Finally, keep your goal in a place you will see it each day - on the corner of your computer, taped to the wall above your desk, maybe even set a phone reminder to go off once a week and remind you of the work to be done.

Whether you are a new librarian, have recently moved buildings, or just a bit shy and introverted, it can be difficult to form instructional partnerships that will positively impact student learning. But by reflecting on your strengths as a practitioner, and purposefully seeking avenues for professional relationships to form, you will be well on your way to the title "Future Ready Librarian."

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The Librarian as an Instructional Partner

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When I first saw the Alliance for Excellent Education's Future Ready Librarians Framework, I was excited to note the inclusion of "Collaborative Leadership" and "Builds Instructional Partnerships" as descriptors of an excellent school librarian. These are two areas of the job that I enjoy the most, so their inclusion only seemed natural to me.