School librarian positions across the country continue to get reduced or cut altogether.
They’ve also been pulled into divisive fights over curriculum, classroom lessons, and culture that are breaking out in school systems across the country. Challenges of books across all grade levels have influenced the purchasing decisions among 37 percent of librarians, according to the School Library Journal’s most recent survey on the topic.
Courtney Pentland is the 2023-24 president of the American Association of School Librarians. A high school librarian in Lincoln, Nebraska, she is an adjunct faculty member of the University of Nebraska-Omaha school library program and has served on the Nebraska School Librarians Association board as board member at large, president, and chapter delegate to AASL.
Aside from making book recommendations for various ages and interests, school librarians organize, expand, and prune book collections. They help create strategies for struggling readers. And they fulfill other duties that have nothing to do with the written word, such as managing budgets and staying on top of library technology.
“School librarians are an incredible asset to their school communities—if they’re given the time and resources to do the job that they know they can do,” said Courtney Pentland, president of the Chicago-based American Association of School Librarians. “There’s a lot of talent and knowledge and expertise that I feel is wasted or underutilized. There needs to be a shift in educational culture.”
In many school systems, school libraries haven’t been prioritized in budgets. More than 10 percent of the United States’ public K-12 students—at least 5.6 million—go to school in districts that don’t employ any librarians to manage the catalog and help students navigate available resources, according to one analysis of federal data.
Pentland recently spoke with EdWeek Market Brief Contributing Writer Robin L. Flanigan about the many roles school librarians play, and the importance of allowing books that speak to a diverse set of student experiences and perspectives.
She also addressed how education companies can stay on top of cultural trends without drawing the attention of book-banning activists.
How would you describe the biggest challenges school librarians face today, compared with just a few years ago?
Not having a certified school librarian at every school in the country has always been an issue. Some school librarians are on staff, but the school library isn’t necessarily the focus of their work. When the pandemic hit, a lot of times they were the point person for the management of 1:1 devices, including processing help desk tickets or doing quick fixes for devices, which can both interrupt their teaching or preclude them from teaching.
Sometimes they’re given lunch or playground duties, or they’re needed for pull-out interventions, which again reduces the amount of time they’re available for instruction or collaboration.
The amount of time [school librarians] have available is being reduced. So what can [vendors] do to make it easier for us to use the things that they have?
So are those being driven by K-12 budget cuts?
We’re seeing a reduction of school librarians because of budget cuts, and a reduction in funding for school libraries. There are many school libraries around the country that have a $0 budget, so school librarians have to find grants and other ways to be very creative in funding print and digital resources. This can be very limiting in what students then have access to for both curricular and personal choice materials.
What is the overall level of staffing for school librarians?
There’s not a good answer to that question because each school district—and then within each district, each school—gets to decide how they want things to work. It’s not enough, I’ll tell you that much.
Some places have a full-time school librarian, some have a librarian half-time or one day a week, and some have a librarian who gets rotated between four elementary schools. It’s rare for an entire state to have a full-time certified school librarian in every building—even if that’s a requirement.
What kinds of products do K-12 librarians wish the marketplace was providing more of, but isn’t?
One of the things I’ve heard from people across the country and seen in social media posts—especially from secondary-level librarians—is to have fewer books that are 300 pages or longer.
Stories that are epically long can be intimidating for students, especially for those who are still developing their reading practices. And there should be more humorous books for older students. When our kids who love Diary of a Wimpy Kid age up, there’s not a lot available for them.
Also, our high school and middle school students don’t just need to read about gritty things, or lighthearted romances. They need transitional books that aren’t pigeonholing ideas about what would be marketable for this age group. There will be no change or growth in what young people read if they don’t have access. They may never know that they like a certain type of story or format if they’re never given the opportunity to try it.
What are education vendors not adequately delivering that would be helpful for school librarians?
The amount of time we have available is being reduced, so what can they do to make it easier for us to use the things that they have? Overall, it’s about “What is a practical use of something that I can try tomorrow—or in the next week—with my students?”
Things should be bite-sized to get people in the door. I don’t want to read a three-page description of something. Give me a paragraph introduction and then maybe links that I can go to if I want to learn more.
The Federal Communications Commission just announced a pilot to allow the use of federal money for K-12 cybersecurity protections. Why is this such an important issue for your organization?
Knowing the state of school and public library budgets, it is good to see that federal funding is being discussed to mitigate the cost of keeping student and patron data secure. I am hopeful that this will be of benefit to libraries across the country at some juncture, and that the funding will be ongoing, so that it not only helps to establish cybersecurity systems but to also maintain and upgrade those systems as needed.
You’ve talked a lot about #OwnVoices authors. [A movement to encourage libraries and other institutions to include materials by marginalized and diverse authors.] What do you want vendors to know?
School librarians can’t be, “Oh, we’ve checked the box for having one book with a Vietnamese character in our school.” And we can’t buy more books with Vietnamese characters if publishers don’t print them.
Everyone should have the opportunity to see themselves reflected in stories they can check out from their library. And everyone should have the opportunity to see others’ stories represented on library bookshelves as well.
The next level is to expand #OwnVoices authors into a variety of genres—sci-fi, fantasy, adventure—at all grade levels. We also don’t just need to hear about the terrible things that folks have endured. It’s important to know accurate portrayals of history, but it’s also important for us to see other people as people who have regular lives, who go on space adventures, who hike in the Andes Mountains, and have pet dragons and unicorns.
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How are school librarians coping with the growing number of challenges to books?
In the past, individual parents contacted a school or school librarian to talk about concerns, which were resolved in healthy ways. Now we are seeing a more significant number of unified, targeted, group-driven challenges—and that’s just what’s being recorded, so the number is exponentially higher.
We have school librarians who have received death threats and have been doxxed and vilified by their communities. It’s all at a more intense level now than it has been in the past.
How do you think education companies that help libraries organize and curate materials should respond—and how can they do so without getting targeted themselves?
Some companies and organizations are making a stand for the rights of readers when it comes to policies and procedures or legislation that are detrimental to intellectual freedom. More involvement from publishers could be helpful, but the biggest thing is for them to continue to publish books that feature and center a diverse range of authors and perspectives.
If school librarians can be courageous in supporting intellectual freedom, then I would hope that publishers, who have much more power than we do in some respects, would choose to be courageous too.
What kinds of support do school librarians need from providers of academic materials when it comes to finding, organizing, and creating resources?
The number of publications dedicated to the craft of school librarianship has decreased. That is problematic because that’s one way for school librarians to increase their professional learning and to share their stories as well, so it would be great if more were available.
There are podcasts for school librarians, but they’re by school librarians. We’re not seeing them come from our vendors or school allies.
Webinars, conferences, subscriptions, etc. can be very helpful, but we typically fund everything ourselves. Please keep that in mind when you’re looking at monetizing for school librarians. Be generous in the way you provide content.
