This section of the course focused on the complex and diverse roles of the teacher librarian in the effective management, administration and evaluation of the school library’s reference services. While this may sound technical, fundamentally this section was about the various roles of the teacher librarian in building an excellent resource collection in a optimally functional library. We first examined the role of the teacher librarian as interviewer in the Reference Interview. As interviewer, the teacher librarian must determine the many needs of the student - to ascertain the information needed, to clarify student questions and to determine the best format of resources to use. The conversation is necessarily human, in that the librarian examines the deeply human connections to the questions being asked: prior learning, fears and emotional cues, areas of need. The process is more akin to a doctor-patient relationship in which doctor attitude, the safe setting, professional ...
An uncommon librarian in the Learning Commons; reflections and queries on inquiry, teaching and literacy.