For decades, librarians were primarily perceived as ‘printed material’ providers:  we selected and purchased books and magazines for our school community, organized and housed them, and put them into the hands of students and staff as needed or wanted.   If we didn’t own a particular resource, we might be able to borrow it from another library, but the learning activity inevitably required hands-on use of a concrete object.

Information came packaged in generic formats: if students learned how to use one encyclopedia or atlas or dictionary or handbook, they would then – hopefully — know how to use any other publication utilizing that same kind of information-organization format.  Libraries were considered the (physical) place to go for the facts you needed to know. 

And everything we provided had been thoughtfully selected based on quality, age-appropriateness, and usefulness.

Even searching for information was – in some ways – easier. I once asked a class to explain the difference between an index and a search engine, and one clever lad replied that “indexes sort it out in advance for you, and tell you what they have and where it is, but search engines have to be told what to look for, and then you have to hope they find what you want!”

Now, thanks to all the new information/communication technologies, our students can access a vast array of information that’s available any time, anywhere, and in all kinds of (often dis-ordered) formats. As Richard Saul Wurman said in Information Anxiety 2:

The great Information Age is really an explosion of non-information: it is an explosion of data… The opportunity is that there is so much information… The catastrophe is that 99% of it isn’t meaningful or understandable.

As librarians, we counter the “everything I need is on the ‘Net” comments by demonstrating how information professionals can provide access to a wide variety of useful/appropriate resources, many of which are unavailable on the “free” Web.  Yet even as forecasters indicate that most new economic growth will come from the “knowledge industry,” school librarians still need to scrounge for support and funding for the programs and services that will educate those future knowledge workers!

According to Andrew Hargadon and Robert Sutton, the authors of “Building an Innovation Factory,” the most innovative companies use a “knowledge-brokering cycle” to spark creativity and develop new products and services.  This knowledge-brokering cycle involves “four intertwined work practices: capturing good ideas, keeping ideas alive, imagining new uses of old ideas, and putting promising concepts to the test.” In-house innovators often serve as knowledge brokers, functioning as  “intermediaries … between otherwise disconnected pools of ideas.”

When I thought about how those concepts reflect what we do in our roles and responsibilities and school librarians, I realized that school librarians are constantly functioning as information intermediaries — creating virtual flow-charts for our students to use in their quests for knowledge. So much of what we do every day reflects this concept of knowledge-brokering as we:

• CAPTURE GOOD IDEAS:  As collection development and management specialists, we locate and evaluate ideas and information in every kind of format.  We select, organize and provide access to resources useful for our constituent’s needs.  We even acquire materials in anticipation of need, based on our informed awareness of curriculum and school/community culture.

• KEEP IDEAS ALIVE: As information providers, we understand the need to promote our resources to make them useful and available to our students and staff. We publicize our holdings through displays, newsletters, activities, websites, etc.  We seek out ways to develop learning activities that will utilize our collections, both print and virtual. An unused collection is a wasted investment, and we need to be able to justify our requests for more funds by demonstrating how heavily our current resources are being used.

• IMAGINE NEW USES OF OLD IDEAS: As information intermediaries for the entire school community, we often see tie-ins across the curriculum that are not immediately apparent to the subject specialist or classroom teacher.  We are ‘resourcerers’ who tend to have extensive mental junkyards, and we often see ways to recycle an old project or activity in order to take advantage of newly-available techniques, formats, or even contexts.

• PUT PROMISING CONCEPTS TO THE TEST: As early users of all kinds of multimedia hardware and online applications, we’re often perceived as the techno-wizards (even if it’s just that we’re the only ones to keep/read the instruction manuals!) who will be willing/able to pilot new products, skills, and strategies.  Look around: how many of you still have laser-discs on your shelves? 

Even our faithful old Dewey Decimal System and Sears or LC subject headings reflect and utilize those innovation strategies:  as we add new materials to our (real and/or virtual) collections, we are gathering, evaluating, extending, and applying new concepts and ideas within the context of what we already have and use.   Our OPACs provide connections to those otherwise disparate and disconnected containers of ideas.

“I may not know the answer, but I know how/where to find it.” AASL’s Standards for the 21^st Century Learner serve to develop effective seekers and users of information, not just as students but also as citizens in a global economy.  When we teach search strategies, we are preparing our students to be effective problem-solvers.  We can’t possibly predict what new formats will become available in the coming decades, but we can certainly develop the skills and strategies that will be needed to utilize those formats.  Whether in fixed or flexible schedules, we strive to develop learning activities that require our students to use and restructure the information they’ve gathered to create and demonstrate new understanding and knowledge of a subject.

A book in hand is no longer the defining factor for information-gathering. New technologies offer us the opportunity to provide our students with 24/7 access to quality resources through subscription databases, while too many of us are still being told that “you don’t need more money; you’ve got plenty of books on those shelves.”  So we’ve learned to find all kinds of creative ways to make the most of our limited funds, evaluating which resources and formats will provide the most benefit for the most users for the greatest amount of time.

More and more I recognize yet another example of how we intuitively use that knowledge-brokering cycle as an integral part of our ongoing job functions.  And often the lyrics to a song from Sunday in the Park with George (Sondheim, 1986) keep bouncing through my brain:

Bit by bit,

Putting it together.

Piece by piece.

Working out the vision night and day.

All it takes is time and perseverance,

With a little luck along the way,

Putting in a personal appearance,

Gathering supporters and adherents…

 

Mapping out the right configuration,

Starting with a suitable foundation…

There a little touch of publication-

Till you have a balanced composition-

Everything depends on preparation-

Even if you do have the suspicion

That it’s taking all your concentration-

 

Bit by bit,

Putting it together…

Today’s school librarian needs to be a data detective, a product evaluator, an information advisor, a research counselor, a project developer, an info-skills instructor, a multi-media manager, a computer coach, a financial analyst, a creative connector, a collaborative colleague, an experiential educator, a student-achievement supporter, a practical politician, an organizational operator, a show-me-how sharer, even an autodidact and polyhistor to function in the current educational marketplace.  Oh yeah, we’re definitely knowledge brokers.  I think it’s time to order some new business cards, don’t you?

Works Cited:

American Association of School Librarians.  Standards for the 21^st Century Learner.  Chicago: American Library Association, 200

Hargadon, Andrew and Robert I. Sutton. “Building an Innovation Factory.” Harvard Business Review. May-June 2000: 157-166.

Sondheim, Stephen and James Lapine.  Sunday in the park with George; a musical. 1984 Original Broadway Cast RECORDING. Audio CD Liner notes. New York, RCA, 1990.

Wurman, Richard Saul, David Sume and Loring Leifer.  Information Anxiety 2.  Indianapolis: Queue, 2000.

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originally published as From School Librarian to Knowledge Broker  in Library Media Connection, April/May 2003. 

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Info Skills — that’s our game

Lifetime Learners, that’s our aim!

We show readers how to use

Resources beyond the textbook blues.

Facts to go and Fiction to share

We stock ideas from everywhere!

Information — we’ve got it!

Imagination — can’t live without it!

Call it the Learning Commons or the IMC —

Whatever the name, it’s the place to be …

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L-I-B-R-A-R-Y!     L-I-B-R-A-R-Y!

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InterWebbing all about.

Subject specific or recreational,

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L inking

I deas

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R eaders

A nd

R esources -

I nforming,

E nriching,

S haring!

Note that it says Ideas, not just Information, because Imagination is just as important as factual content.  
Also note that there is no mention of format, since it’s the content of those ideas that is more important than the container that encapsulates them.
Isn’t that what libraries — and librarians — are all about?

Activate (v): initiate something; start a function.
Synonyms: arouse, energize, impel, mobilize, motivate, prompt, propel, set in motion, start, stimulate, switch on, trigger.

Advocate (v): support idea or cause publicly.
Synonyms: advise, argue for, bolster, boost, campaign for, champion, defend, go to bat for, justify, promote, recommend, support.
—http://thesaurus.reference.com/

Activists start the process to make something happen.
Advocates support the process and product of that initial action.
BIIIG difference.

Every semester, it’s the unit on Public Relations that is a revelation to most of the students in my School Library Management course. Posters and displays and reading contests: no problem. But administrative reports and collaborative connections and community outreach efforts … you mean we have to do that, too? Yes.
Here are some unfortunate realities:

• Too many adults (both in and out of schools) still think of the library as a quiet place where the nice lady just reads stories and checks out books to kids.
• Too many politicians think that ‘you can find everything you need on the InterWebs,’ even though those same politicians prefer shelves of books as the background for their photo-ops when making education-related pronouncements.
• Too many school librarians seem to subscribe to a “field of dreams” mythology: if you build a library, “they” will somehow know about it, and come and use it and value it.
• Too many school districts are cutting school library programs because too many school administrators and taxpayers don’t recognize the educational value TO STUDENTS of those library programs.

• Too many school librarians talk about the urgent need for advocacy efforts to support the idea of school libraries, but somehow expect those efforts to come from somewhere/someone else on their behalf.

School librarians can NOT assume that the rest of the world understands how and why library programs are necessary, especially in our changing information landscape.

We need to be ACTive about REACHING OUT to all members of our communities: teachers, administrators, parents, legislators, media, etc., to get our stories out. We can’t expect – or wait for – our professional associations to do it for us. And our stories have to be positive: no whining or begging.

Ask yourself: what can YOU do to SHOW and TELL what’s happening in your local program? What evidence can you use to demonstrate the impact of effective library programs and services on student learning?

And ask yourself this, too: are YOU paying attention to the changes happening around you? Because the world has changed, and our students’ needs have changed, and if you don’t learn how to steer effectively through the hills and valleys of program justification, you may just end up as road-kill.