Learner-Centered Librarianship

"Texas students will attain knowledge and skills to become accomplished readers, independent learners, critical thinkers, creative problem solvers, and informed citizens through the expertise of school librarians and the use of resources and services provided by school library programs." -Texas State Library and Archives Commission

A learner-centered library requires student welfare to be at the center of every decision made for the program. When analyzing student and teacher needs on my campus I discovered a lack of opportunity for collaboration and creativity. This need led me to advocate for a campus makerspace! The artifact shared below is the grant proposal I developed during my class on the implementation of educational technology programs. I am happy to share that I did in fact eventually receive funding for this grant and our makerspace should be completed by December of this year!

A librarian who is keeping students at the center of his/her decision making must know their student body well enough to curate an appropriate collection. Creating an annotated bibliography for young adult literature (see below) during my class on children and young adult's books exposed me to many novels that were previously not on my radar afforded me the opportunity to evaluate literature through the lens of a media specialist.

As part of my class on developing general and specialized collections I developed a collection development policy (see artifact below). This project required me to dive deep into the collection offered on my campus and to reflect on whether or not it was appropriately serving my students. I utilized district information, published collection development policies from other districts, and peer feedback to write this policy. I feel confident that, should the need arise, this policy could be effectively implemented in my current school library!

This year I have been able to attend district media resource specialist meetings with our secondary instructional technology coordinators. It has been interesting to speak with fellow librarians in my district who have chosen to "genrify" their collections. I am still undecided on which method is better for students, however both require librarians to know how to catalog! I am grateful to have developed the knowledge during my cataloging and classification class that will be required to properly catalog materials for my library in the future (see artifact below)!

The core values of Texas school libraries include academic achievement, equitable and universal access, reading, lifelong learning, technology, information literacy, innovation, and intellectual freedom. One of the most valuable skills I learned in my master's program was how to evaluate a library program.

For my practicum experience I was lucky enough to be able to evaluate the library where I current work. I learned so much and I will hopefully be able to use it as a benchmark when I become a media resource specialist on my campus. The artifact below is the evaluation dashboard I completed during my practicum. Working through each of the different library standards and principles made a seemingly overwhelming task much easier to complete! Click here to view my evaluations for each of the six standards.