{"id":8123,"date":"2014-02-11T00:01:40","date_gmt":"2014-02-11T05:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/?p=8123"},"modified":"2025-06-17T12:22:21","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T16:22:21","slug":"were-more-important-than-they-think","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/2014\/02\/were-more-important-than-they-think\/","title":{"rendered":"We’re more important than they think!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ask a children’s librarian about her department’s place in the hierarchy of her school, library, or system, and you may hear, “at the bottom.” If you feel this is\u00a0true in your<\/em> situation, it’s time to do something about it!<\/p>\n

Think of all the things you do that are not necessarily related to youth services, but are vital to your school or library. Be sure that you bring them to the attention of supervisors. Do you work on committees outside your area of expertise? Do you train other teachers or staff members in technology? Do you offer programs for adults, parents, people with disabilities, teachers? You do more than you think!<\/p>\n

Check the statistics for new youth library cards and circulation of children’s materials. Do you have a designated children’s web page? Check those stats, too. Are they worth crowing about? If they are, start crowing. (If they aren’t, you know where you’ve got work to do.) Public library administrators are well aware that today’s children are tomorrow’s library users. If schools don’t appreciate the vital work of media specialists, media specialists need to crow louder.<\/p>\n

\u00a0A wise supervisor once told me, “Don’t bring complaints. Bring solutions.” (Though I freely admit to complaining now and again.) Do you have a small success story from a program, an outreach, or even from a personal interaction with a patron or student? Share it with your supervisor. S\/he may be looking for success stories to share with the library’s board of directors, school principal, or local politicians.<\/p>\n

It may look like we’re just crafting, singing, reading, and playing, but our patrons are the future of libraries. Our students are the future of our country. Sure, we’re having fun, but we’re getting the job done!<\/p>\n

Consider this your pat on the back for the day! Good job. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ask a children’s librarian about her department’s place in the hierarchy of her school, library, or system, and you may hear, “at the bottom.” If you feel this is\u00a0true in your situation, it’s time to do something about it! Think of all the things you do that are not necessarily related to youth services, but are vital to your school or library. Be sure that you bring them to the attention of supervisors. Do you work on committees outside your area of expertise? Do you train other teachers or staff members in technology? Do you offer programs for adults, parents, people with disabilities, teachers? You do more than you think! Check the statistics for new youth library cards and circulation of children’s materials. Do you have a designated children’s web page? Check those stats, too. Are they worth crowing about? If they are, start crowing. (If they aren’t, you know…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":137,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_members_access_role":[],"_members_access_error":""},"categories":[113,64,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogger-lisa-taylor","category-bloggers","category-slice-of-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/137"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alsc.ala.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}