I’ve never really felt that I had inadequate funds to do the job. If I don’t have enough, I adapt. Buy less, do things differently. Having lots of money – to buy lots of new book resources – is lovely, but the places where an effective teacher-librarian can really make a difference in students’ learning can’t be measured in how many new books can be bought and processed in a year.

Surely Georgia is lumping large, small, infants, primary and secondary schools together in her figures? Without further breakdown, I can’t make any sense out of them. Sorry.

I do find it distressing to hear of how many other states of Australia are seemingly without trained teacher librarians, or indeed don’t have any teacher librarians at all. During my tenure as editor of “Scan”, I realised how important it was for groups of principals to have a thorough understanding of the importance of information skills, and the explicit teaching and provision of activities that encouraged higher order thinking. If teacher librarians can win over these principal teams (ie. the movers and shakers who organise principals’ conferences), they go a long way to empowering other principals to make sensible/efficient choices should the NSW DET ever grant principals the (often-rumoured to be coming) power to divert funds normally set aside for a teacher librarian’s salary, to be used elsewhere in the school, if they see fit.

If a school principal is granted such a power, and decides that his or her school has no need for a teacher librarian, but needs an extra technology person instead, then the teacher librarian should be ready to make that transition to technology person. (Assuming it pays the same salary as a teacher, of course; I’m not advocating pay cuts.)

A good teacher librarian is not going to be “let go” if they are highly valued by the staff, students and executive team. TLs need to become irreplaceable. The key is for the teacher librarian to ensure that they are thought of as an invaluable member of the school team.

That puts a lot back onto the TL, of course. “Why should we have to keep up our advocacy work?” people will ask. But actions speak louder than words. I’d like to think that no principal of mine would ever tell me I was no longer required, and my salary would be better utilized by employing a library technician, because I work very hard to make sure I’m not so easily disposable.

I’m “the wiki man”. The “website man”. The “book rap expert”. The “Book Week man”. “OASIS Man”. The “picture books man”. The “readers’ theatre guy”. The “report card editor”. The person with the wackiest hat on Crazy Hat Day. And more recently: “the IWB person”. Hopefully, I’m also the person to whom teachers come for advice on how to build in high order thinking into their KLA programs, and to ensure that their evaluation tasks are measurable.

I cannot see NSW DET eliminating school libraries or teacher librarians just yet. Maybe those libraries and TLs incapable of adapting and evolving will disappear? Especially if all students soon have a clever little handheld device that puts them in 24/7 touch with an overload of digitised information. It may not be immediately obvious that TLs still have a role to play. Again, I say TLs need to become irreplaceable.

Like it or not, it’s survival of the fittest. Other states have seemingly not survived as well as NSW. But budgets really have very little to do with that.

I guess we need to ask, what do NAPLAN test results have to say about Australian states without teacher librarians. Or schools with small library budgets? And do TLs in NSW want to know those answers?