Making Your School Library Essential: An Advocacy Guide for Teacher-Librarians

Abstract

School librarianship has come a long way during the first century of its existence, but like all dimensions of living, learning, and working in the 21st century, school libraries are facing unprecedented challenges. This advocacy guide presents those challenges in the context of educating youth for a future we struggle to define. It develops an argument for recognising the potential of school libraries to integrate print with digital literacy, basic competencies with critical thinking, and content mastery with content creation. The argument is divided into nine sections to address the nine beliefs that can change the culture of a school to integrate school libraries into the fabric of educating youth for the 21st century.