Image is EVERYTHING (2 of 3)

I was at that part of my session where I was encouraging my co-teachers to learn the software that the school has institutionalized. It took me two days to learn it. I was emphasizing on the importance of time as one investment in e-learning. That's when I heard the comment.

It was meant as a joke. However, it made me look at it's meaning beyond the lines. It seems that teachers with full teaching load will not find it easy to squeeze in their time to learn the software. On the other hand, librarians, have the luxury of time to learn the software because they have nothing "heavy" to do. No kids to supervise. No regular lesson plans to make. No quiz tests to check and grade. Librarians just arrange books, conduct book fairs, tell stories, surf the WWW. Librarians lead easy lives and "stress" free work. That is the image most teachers have of librarians. My poor co-teacher could not see this new emerging role of school librarians as collaborators for teaching and instruction.

Most people are stuck with that image of school librarians. Even school principals and school directors percieve librarians in the traditional light. Middle level coordinators find it strange how librarians can enrich their curriculum. It is an alien idea for subject coordinators to find a school librarian who can recommend learning resources for their teachers, more so, a school librarian who has a general grasp of the subscribed curriculum and its pedagogical practices.

The sad thing is, most of us still hold that traditional image. Nothing wrong with holding on to tradition, but librarianship is as dynamic as education. If we keep to ourselves and do the library practices we are accustomed to then we'll never grow; we'll never improve. We stale. We die.

I have a lot of images of school librarians in particular, but there is one that is recently my favorite. This came upon our school library's move to acquire graphic novels.



Batgirl is Barbara Gordon. Barbara is a librarian by profession. She was inspired by Batman, the caped crusader, to be the Batgirl of Gotham. When the Joker crippled her to a life confined in a wheel chair, Barbara's spirit was still standing on two firm legs. She took on another image.

She became Oracle, an information specialist and broker for all the superheroes of Gotham. With her skills in technology and the management of information, superheroes depend on her for valueable knowledge. Along with these superheroes, Oracle, librarian and information broker, saves Gotham from crime and the villains that terrorize its citizens.

---TO BE CONTINUED---