I believe that I sent each of you a copy of our most recent Media Clerk I Job Description . After you review it, it appears that what we actually do has little resemblance to the job description.One (1) through seven (7) seem to be typical office support activities and, at least at Skyline, account for a very small part of the day. Eight (8) through sixteen (16) are much more ambiguous and open for interpretation (by the clerk, the teacher librarian, and the principals). Does 'assist staff and students in finding appropriate materials' mean pointing to the the non-fiction section? ...or does it mean building pathfinders, websites, wikis, and really helping them to find the best resources available (print resources, subscription databases, or on the Internet)? ...does it mean actually instructing (yes, I said instructing) them on computer use, software use, multimedia use, and research/information literacy skills. The first takes 5 seconds and the latter can take half a day, hours, or weeks.
Our job is, then, defined by the expectations of, and creative freedom granted by, your teacher librarian and your building principal. How we create and perform our job, within those boundaries, is what our job description will be. We all serve as library support personnel with one goal in mind -- to contribute to the information literacy and success of our students. How we accomplish that goal is providing, and supporting, library services through tasks such as processing books, marketing our collection, providing reader advisory services, collection development and maintenance, circulation activities, statistical reporting, serving lattes, cleaning, organizing, and acting as A/V and tech gurus, instructors, tutors, and disciplinarians, etc. Whatever else it takes to meet our goal -- we all do that in different ways and with different routines.
Your teacher librarian, and their role in the library, also defines your job. In a perfect scenario, our teacher librarians would be collaborating with teachers on lessons (incorporating information literacy standards), team-teaching, teaching information literacy, reading, and research skills to the students, etc. ...which, in reality, would leave little time for library support activities. That's where we come in -- the operation managers of the library. How much, or little, you actually act as a manager of the library depends on the TEACHER part of the teacher librarian title. Some of the teacher librarians don't even work in the library; some have classroom duties; some want to be the teacher librarian AND the operations manager; some are forced to do clerk duties because the clerks are pulled for other school duties i.e. tech reps, homework coaches, hall or lunch duties, etc. Some schools have eliminated the clerk position altogether (yikes!).
So, clerks, what is your role in your library? What do you do on a daily basis? What are some of your pet projects? What are your responsibilities? What do you do? Be as detailed as you want -- other clerks want to know! After compiling the results of suggestions for clerk meetings by all the clerks, new and veteran, the majority want to know what other clerks do. Let's run with it... who's first?
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What do I do. Well, I wear many hats. I work in the Computer lab from 7:30-9:30 daily. Then I transfer to the Library until the end of the day. During my day, I am the In School Suspension monitor, I coordinate the Parent Volunteers (all 161 of them) for all the fundraisers, all the field trips, and all the activities at school, including dances, sports, picture day, etc. I also am in charge of a keyboarding class, running Accelerated Reader reports for teachers at the end of each quarter, and testing all kids on the STAR system at the beginning of 1st and 4th quarters. I attend all of the PAC meetings, media clerk meetings, staff meetings, and I serve on the accountability committee. I am responsible for Homework Club every Wednesday, and I also am the coach for the Geography Bee that comes around in March. I take care of all of the AV inventory, shelf books, look after 2 book fairs and keep the schedules for the lab and library running smoothly. I weeded 2800 books from our library last year, logged them all in as discards and sent them to DMS. I inventoried our entire library in June of 07. If I find a grant worth writing, I'll do it. I prepare all of our books for cataloging, and I inventory all of our magizines. I weed periodicals when necessary, and I help students on look up's and on the computers with all of Microsoft Office products. I run Web reporter reports before all of school dances to collect fees and overdue books!
Wow...I think that you must actually run the school! I'm impressed that you juggle all of that so well! I do, however, wish that your talents could be utilized 100% in the library, helping to implement information literacy skills -- kids could probably just skip high school and go directly to college! Mead Middle is so lucky to have you!
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