Dear Librarian: What Do We Do Now?

The year I was first hired as a school librarian, my district allotted a book budget of $14 per student to every school. When I share this with school librarians today, they are shocked and often comment on how lucky I was. These days, school library budgets are a little like unicorns, mythical concepts that a lot of people have heard of but no one has ever seen. At the time, though, what stood out most was just how quickly that money disappeared. It wasn’t enough to maintain, much less grow, a collection for my middle school, which served just over 1,300 readers, many of whom, despite being smart, funny, and creative, struggled to pass state reading assessments.

Still, I recognized that I was lucky. And in other ways, too. In addition to having an allotted budget that year, I also worked with a full-time library technician/assistant. By the time I arrived, a brand new, baby-librarian with a lot of “crazy” ideas, Anne had already been in that role for 19 years. She had outlasted many librarians before me and knew the collection like the back of her hand.

That first year, Anne and I weeded the entire collection, created my school district’s very first designated section for graphic novels in a school library, and applied for, and received, over $24,000 in grants to supplement our budget. Here's a photo of us with books that were purchased with some of those grant funds. (We held a contest to see who could guess how many books we were able to purchase with the amount awarded).

As an(other) aside, when I arrived, our library had only three titles classified in what was then a new format, graphic novels. All of them were tucked away in 741.5 where absolutely no one could find them. By the end of that first year, the section we carved out held over 300 books. By the time I left, it held nearly 4,000.

Anyway, the next year, library budgets were eliminated in my district.

The year after that, Anne's position was cut.

For the remainder of my time as a school librarian, I worked without a budget or a direct colleague. Still, I continued to be lucky. I worked with principals who understood the value I brought to the school and continued to allot funds to the library provided that I:

• submitted a request, and...

• could articulate the ways that these moneys would benefit kids.

Many of my librarian colleagues across the district weren't so lucky.

I’ve used the word lucky a lot in the telling of this story. And to be sure, luck played a role. But I’d be doing myself (and y’all) a disservice if I didn’t acknowledge that, in addition to luck, I also worked hard to make certain that everyone in my building (and beyond) understood my role, could see the ways my work supported outcomes for kids, and never doubted that my goals for readers were aligned with those of the larger school community and district.

If that first year in the library, when I seemingly had it all, taught me anything, it was that librarianship was a position in peril. At any moment, and with no warning or discussion, the readers at my school could be without a librarian. In some ways, I’m grateful to have learned that lesson so early on, because it shaped the way I have approached this work ever since.

A Letter From The Present

This week, I received a letter from a librarian whose position is being cut despite, as her letter explained, having "transformed a neglected library in a tiny space into an accessible, active reading culture and built a diverse, high-interest collection that reflects student interests and the world beyond their small town."

I wish I could say that this letter was an anomaly, but sadly, I receive similar notes fairly frequently. In far too many places, far too many young people do not have access to school librarians. And this trend is only getting worse.

That said, y’all, I am honestly not sure why people write to me to share these stories, but I suspect it’s mostly just a way to shout into the void, knowing that, in this case, the void (me!) gets it. Obviously, I can’t magically restore their positions or help their administrators understand their role. What I can do is listen, empathize, and join them in shaking our tiny fists at all the forces conspiring against a literate society.

This letter, however, also contained a couple of questions that I needed more time to chew on before responding. So, I asked this librarian if I could share them here, along with more in-depth and thoughtful responses than I was able to offer in the email. A day or so later, I received their permission, so here we go!

Question 1: Smiling Through The Tears

"How do you stay positive and continue advocating for libraries when you encounter this kind of devaluation of the profession?"

My knee-jerk reaction to this question was to consider whether or not I really do stay positive in the face of <gestures wildly at all the things.> Upon closer reflection, I think the better descriptor for my attitude might be determined (or, as my husband might say, stubborn). I’m at the age now where I could, with a few changes to how I live, hang it all up. I could decide that this is all someone else’s problem and spend the rest of my days playing with my dogs and building Lego. But every time I consider actually retiring, I am reminded of what I owe to libraries and librarians.

I’ve shared many, many times how, as a poor, transient kid, libraries and reading were stabilizing forces in my life. I’ve been transparent about the fact that when all the books I owned were used as kindling in our family’s woodstove one winter when the power was turned off, libraries and librarians brought me back to reading. I’ve never hidden the fact that I feel indebted to this profession because, quite frankly, I do not know where I would be had it not been for access to books and the librarians who curate the collections that reconnected me to them.

Although I try to maintain a personable and empathetic presence both on and offline, the truth is, I’m not particularly positive. I’m snarky and do very little to curb my potty mouth. But I am also nothing if not resolute and tenacious. I try to remain hopeful, because the alternative is simply unbearable. But I also know that the future doesn’t change by itself. We have to change it. And I’ll be damned if I allow school libraries to become a thing of the past under my watch without doing everything in my power to prevent it. I may fail, but at least I’ll know I tried.

Question 2: Proving Our Worth (Again)

"One thing I’m realizing through this process is that I spent so much time doing the work to build the library and reading culture that I didn’t spend enough time documenting the impact. If you have advice on how librarians can better track and communicate that work, I would really appreciate it."

There’s a great meme about book recommendations that captures that feeling when someone asks you for advice and two things are true at the same time: 1) you’re super excited because it feels like you’ve been waiting your entire life to be asked this question, and 2) you also know this could easily go sideways because it would be very easy to overwhelm them with way more information than they actually need.

Honestly, that’s kind of how I felt in response to this question about how librarians can collect and share information that helps them prove their worth. My first response was akin to, “OMG!! I KNOW THE ANSWER!!! PICK ME!!!!!” But once I settled down a bit, I also knew that I needed to think carefully about how I crafted this response, because I could very easily just info-dump, which might be satisfying to me but probably wouldn’t be useful to anyone else.

With all of that said, I’ve decided to focus my response on two very successful ways that I collected and shared data to support my work in the library. Then, I’ll share a bit about the nuts and bolts that went into making both of those efforts work. And, finally, I’ll offer some thoughts on how we can scale those efforts so that they support others working in librarianship who may also be facing the same challenges. Let’s go!

Strategy 1: The Data Wall

Whenever I hear the term “data wall,” I can’t help but be reminded of the data plastered bulletin boards that started appearing in schools in the early 2010s. The idea behind this was pretty simple: in an effort to ensure school staff kept student achievement goals front and center, important student data was posted in spaces that teachers and other staff frequented. I saw data walls in principals’ offices, staff lounges, above the copy machines, and, yes, even in staff restrooms. None of the data was student-specific, but it often broke down achievement goals by grade level and subject area.

As I write this post today, data walls are definitely still a thing in public education and have become a regular fixture in many classrooms, a practice I have opinions about, but we shall save those for another day.

For now, I want to tell you the story of the first data wall I ever created for my own library. On it, I curated data related to circulation, including the books that were checked out the most, similar data related to fiction vs. nonfiction checkouts, and a list of which students had the most checkouts that month. I changed the data every month and was very proud of it.

A couple of important things to note. First, I always asked students for permission before sharing their names on the data wall. But more importantly (to this story anyway!) is the fact that this bulletin board was located right next to a door that led to my principal’s office. This placement wasn’t accidental. I wanted her to notice my data wall, because even back then, I felt the constant need to advocate for my position, even though I had a principal who absolutely adored me.

This is important context for what follows, because even though my principal believed in me and my work, she also wasn’t (at first) sold on the idea of the data wall. In fact, when she first noticed it and asked me to explain its purpose, she had questions. The most pointed being, “Why do I care about this?” While the answer to this question seemed obvious to me, it wasn’t to her. What’s more, when I told her she should care because there’s a relationship between kids reading for pleasure and other measurable outcomes, my principal didn’t just acquiesce. Instead, she said, “Oh! Show me that data!”

Now, to be clear, this ruffled my feathers a bit, but once I’d nursed my bruised ego, I realized that my principal wasn't being negative or difficult. Rather, she was challenging me to do something more with the data I had access to. Still, I knew I couldn’t even begin to show my principal the kind of data she wanted to see in a data wall - if for no other reason than student achievement data is confidential, so my approach to helping connect those dots for her was two fold. 

First, I had to accept that, as is, my data wall was mostly performative. While I still loved it, I wanted to make it more meaningful, so I decided to use it as a way to collaborate with the math department at my school. To do this, I began by expanding the wall to include a timeline of all the data I collected. With that goal in mind, I started using the wall space to the left of the bulletin board to collect data from previous months, posting each month’s graphs and charts in chronological order.

From there, I began working with math teachers in my school to create what we called the weekly math puzzlers. These were math questions that could be answered by reviewing the data on the data wall and the timeline.

Each week, student guesses were collected in a box that I kept at the circulation desk. At the end of the week, one winner was drawn to receive a prize, which was a coupon for a “free” ice cream treat in the school cafeteria. I worked with my cafeteria manager to purchase $100 worth of ice cream coupons at the beginning of the year and distributed them as prizes for various events in the library. Because I worked at a school where the vast majority of students received subsidized school meals that did not include goodies like ice cream, this was a big prize that cost the library very little.

I knew, going into it, that this would help me use the data wall for something more purposeful than just sharing circulation data. But I didn’t anticipate the other, far more meaningful outcomes that would result from this move.

As I've already mentioned, each week a math teacher would help me come up with the puzzler question. Sometimes the question was designed to test kids on a specific skill that an individual teacher wanted them to practice. Sometimes the question was designed to be so easy that any student in the school should be able to answer it. And sometimes the question was written so that only the most advanced students in our middle school would be successful at solving it.

Some teachers offered students extra credit for simply making a guess. Some teachers offered kids a bonus point on a test if they got the answer correct. One teacher brought her classes up to the data wall every single week to ensure that all of her students were given the chance to participate. Some teachers ignored my invitations to collaborate completely and never mentioned the data wall to their students even one time.

Still… here's what I did each week regardless of those variables. 

1. Each week, I collected student responses to the math puzzler using a ½ page paper form that I printed out and left stacked next to the collection box.

2. Each morning, a student volunteer emptied the box and recorded all student responses into a google form.

3. At the end of the week, I sent the spreadsheet in which this data was collected to all the math teachers in the building (regardless of whether or not their students participated) and to my entire admin staff with a note that simply read, "FYI: Here’s the data from this week’s math puzzler. Big thanks to ______ for helping come up with this week’s question which was _______.” 

I did not care one bit who opened the email, because I knew that just by sending it, I was also sending a message that:

• As the librarian, I understood their curriculum

• I cared about the goals they had for students

• I was an instructional partner who did much more than sit in the library and read all day

• My role was valuable beyond some of the traditional ways principals still tend to view librarians (as people who can cover classes, manage student devices, or provide a space for meetings and testing)

• 
  

Repeating that message week after week, simply by sharing the data I was collecting from my data wall, helped to establish me as an instructional leader. However, people did open those emails and used the data to support their students, which was the biggest win of all.

Strategy 2: The Annual (and mid -year) Report

I knew that in order to fully respond to my principal’s challenge related to the relationship between library work and student outcomes, I would need to collect different data and share it in a different way. That format turned out to be an annual report.

While public librarians have long generated reports for their communities, the trend of publishing school library annual reports began gaining momentum around 2010 as librarians sought more effective ways to communicate their value to administrators, school boards, and the wider community. Rather than relying solely on informal updates or circulation numbers, librarians began to compile professional, polished reports that highlighted both quantitative measures, such as the number of classes taught or books circulated, and qualitative evidence, such as student testimonials or teacher feedback.

Two of the earliest and most visible leaders in this movement were Dr. Joyce Valenza and Buffy Hamilton. Joyce’s reports combined statistics with lengthy narratives, along with graphic and sometimes even video data, to help her administration understand the impact of the library program. Similarly, Buffy Hamilton, who was known at the time as “The Unquiet Librarian,” also published detailed reports that highlighted not just numbers, but the stories behind them, particularly how school library programs were shaping student learning and fostering a culture of reading. Their work, widely shared through blogs and professional networks, inspired a generation of school librarians to adopt annual reports as a standard practice.

That said, while I was inspired by both of their work, I also knew that my annual reports needed to be adapted to reach a very specific audience, my principal, so I crafted them to do two things:

First, I used language in my annual report that my principal would immediately recognize and respond to. Often in our conversations, if I began overexplaining something, she would pause and ask the same question, “What’s the bottom line, Jennifer?” This became a joke between us, so I made sure to include it as a way to highlight for her the most important bits of information in my report. Although I hoped she would read it all (and she always did), this helped me focus her attention on the parts that mattered most.

Next, I focused my report on the data she asked for. While I included a few stories about programs or collaborations that I was most proud of, I made sure to highlight how circulation data correlated with student achievement data. This meant that at the end of the year, when classroom teachers were busy analyzing their student data, I was doing the same thing through the lens of how this information related to my work.

I will never forget the first year I created this report for my principal. I reminded her of our conversation related to the data wall and her challenge. Then I said, “Well… I’ve compiled the data you asked for.” She laughed and said, “Of course you did.”

As time went on, I used my annual report as a way to emphasize the impact of my work, but I also continued to use it as a mechanism for helping my principal understand that I was always listening. The year she asked me to teach her more about infographics, I crafted my report as an infographic. When I learned that she was using my reports as data to share with the district superintendent around her work in mentoring support staff (like librarians) in affecting student outcomes, I read through her evaluation instrument and made sure my report addressed specific elements of how she was being evaluated. When our staff started to place an even greater emphasis on ensuring students felt safe and welcome at school, I made sure my report reflected how my work supported those efforts.

To be sure, these efforts took time. But were they worth it? 100%.

Over the years, I’ve been curating a collection of school library annual reports that I use in both the courses I teach and in professional development I lead related to library advocacy. This year, with the help of my buddy Len Bryan, I also shared a mechanism for sharing library data at the midpoint of the school year, rather than waiting until the very end.

That's A Lot, Jennifer!

I used MS Word to create my first annual report. From there, I jumped to tools like Easel.ly and Google Docs. Each year, I found myself experimenting with the format, both because I was always excited to learn about new tools that offered me the opportunity to create more visually dynamic products and because I always felt a certain amount of (self-imposed) pressure to outdo myself.

I mention this simply to acknowledge that the tools I used to gather, curate, and share data have changed, to be sure. But some things haven’t. In fact, I’d wager that the most important supports needed to make this kind of data collection and sharing happen remain the same.

Ultimately, the resources that made the biggest difference for me were human. Turns out, as with all heavy things, they are much easier to carry with help. So here are some of the things I did to make this work doable that have nothing to do with technology.

First, in addition to the math teachers who proved to be amazing collaborators in the work of making my data walls more meaningful, I had accountability partners, a small group of trusted library colleagues (both in and out of my district) with whom I checked in regularly. Together, we shared our data-sharing efforts, cheered one another on, and, perhaps most importantly, made sure that each of us was remembering to do things like:

• Take photos of happenings in the library

• Save notes and emails from parents, staff, and students that helped reinforce the impact of our work

• Organize our data in ways that would make it easier to parse later

• Not wait until the end of the year to remind folks that we are, in fact, awesome

Later, when I worked at the district and state level, I organized data-sharing and collating “parties” for librarians to get together and do similar work, but with me there to support those efforts. During those meetings, we:

• Shared the kinds of data we were collecting

• Made suggestions about how that data might be used to illustrate our value

• Imagined and suggested new data sources to explore

• Cheered each other on

• Pushed one another to continue growing

Now, as someone who works regularly with schools and districts, I still help librarians build these kinds of communities of practice through professional development. Because if there’s one thing I want you to take from all of this, it’s this: you don’t have to do everything, but you do have to start somewhere. This work is a lot, but it is absolutely doable. Plus, since I haven't hung up my cape just yet, if you'd like me to come to your district, feel free to hit me up!

Sharing Your Work (Or Not!)

As I wrap up this post, I want to acknowledge that we are living through unprecedented times, when librarians (of all kinds, but particularly school librarians) have been positioned at the center of multiple, ongoing culture wars.

Add to that the reality that the platforms where we gather and share information are no longer (if they indeed ever were) neutral. Increasingly, I hear from teachers and librarians who no longer feel comfortable sharing their work, never mind their views, online. For a lot of us, these spaces where we used to gather to share ideas and cheer each other on no longer feel safe.

So, as I talk about sharing your work, I want to be clear that I’m not talking about social media. If you still feel good about posting your work online for others to be inspired by, I hope you will continue to do that very thing. After all, you never know who you might inspire simply by tapping the share button.

In addition to providing inspiration for other librarians, your posts may also remind the larger community that library work matters. At a time when so many people outside of education are lamenting dismal literacy data, reminding those folks that fewer and fewer kids have access to librarians, who do incredibly impactful work, feels more important than ever.

Still, when we share our work online, it can be easy to lose sight of our real audience. For the most part, your social media network cannot affect decision-making in your district or community related to funding, staffing, or other essential measures of support. The people you really need to reach are within arm’s length, so make sure they remain the focus of your work, not the people who may end up engaging with your content online.

Finally, to the librarian who inspired this post by sending me a note to ponder, thank you. I hope that the next chapter allows you to share your gifts with kids who really need them. Wherever you land, I hope you carry this with you: the work you do matters, and it deserves to be seen.