My name is Connie Parker Harrison. I am a media specialist in Dearborn Public Schools and split the week between three elementary schools and a high school. Dearborn is a fairly large district to the west of Detroit Michigan with a diverse population of students. This means that students are coming into schools with a wide variety of skill sets in all curricular areas. I also teach part-time in the library and information science department at Wayne State University where my specialty is children’s literature.  I have two master’s degrees: an MLIS (master’s in library science) and an Ed.S. (education specialist certificate) in education leadership and policy studies.

Technology used to be a hobby for me but because of staffing cuts in the media centers, my hobby has become my lifeline. I have to have my instructional tools at my fingertips and they have to be user-friendly. I started this blog as a way of organizing myself.

Oh, and just in case you’ve forgotten, Madam Pince is the librarian at Hogwarts.

### February, 2019

It’s been 10 years since I began using this blog to organize myself and the world of librarianship is still shrinking.  Media specialists are being eliminated from buildings or staffing is cut to the bare bones. In addition, now graduates from library programs with specializations in school libraries are required to do a practicum, not a student teaching assignment. The difference is the amount of time they must spend in a school library to receive their endorsement. Back when I graduated from Eastern Michigan University with a bachelor’s degree in library science, my student teaching assignment required me to spend a half day in a school library for an entire 16 week semester. These days, practicum students spend two weeks learning their craft. (Admittedly, they are full days, but still, it’s only 10 days.)  As I send off my practicum teachers I wonder how they will learn all they need to know to do their jobs. Will they learn on the job? Or, will they reinforce the prejudice that school librarians are light weights and do nothing more than read to kids all day.

I’ll also admit that my experience in school libraries is unique. When I was young, my mother was a school library secretary. Her schedule required her to work two weeks after school got out in June and return to work in August two weeks before school began for the next year. My mother was frugal. Okay, she could be cheap. She didn’t want to pay for a baby sitter, so she took me to work with her for those four weeks. And she put me to work. I learned how to do inventories, how to process books, how to purchase books, how to keep a budget, how to organize a school library. I learned the verbiage, like “book jobber” and “spine label.” By the time I graduated from college, I knew how to be a school librarian and I also knew what was required of a school secretary. This experience has given me a unique perspective.

This morning as I was covering book jackets with mylar, I was thinking about my retirement which is no longer looming off in the distance. Who’s going to cover these books when I leave? Who’s going to know why it’s necessary to take the time to cover the books jackets instead of simply taping them to a book and putting them on the shelf? When librarians like me move on, what will come of the practices that have been part of school librarianship for decades?

I decided to expand the reach of this blog and include in it a kind of manual for what I do and why. I hope to add tutorials and templates that will make being a school librarian easier. I hope you find it useful.