Guest post from Media Specialist Darby Malvey
The NJLA Annual Conference is soon approaching, and librarians of all types are welcome to attend. But if you’re a school librarian, like I am, you may be wondering why you’d go. What does the NJLA Conference offer New Jersey’s media specialists that makes it worth our precious time? As a school librarian, and a long-time conference attendee, I can honestly say that attending the NJLA annual conference has true benefits for new and veteran media specialists alike.
School librarians across the state know how difficult it can be to get true, valuable professional development within their districts. While some of us are the sole librarians in our districts, many others are part of small or undervalued departments that don’t often see professional development aimed specifically at their needs. In-service days and PD opportunities at our building or district levels don’t always provide us what we need, but conferences designed specifically for librarians are an ideal way to develop professionally. The NJLA conference allows media specialists to leap beyond the boxes to which school-provided PD often confines us - like lesson planning, rubrics, and standardized testing - and brings us quality development in areas that we and we alone can turnkey to our students and colleagues. Many of us spend a lot of time trying to take what we learn in school-focused sessions and rework it to make it appropriate in the library setting. Attending NJLA’s annual conference provides us with an opportunity to do just the opposite by taking library-focused development and reworking it to fit the needs of our schools.
Whether it’s brushing up on reference skills, attending a diversity and inclusion workshop, or gaining insights into successful makerspaces, so much of what is offered at NJLA can be utilized by school librarians in their own media centers, and much of it is information that we rarely find anywhere else.
Beyond an abundance of valuable PD and training sessions, the NJLA Annual Conference also provides a unique opportunity for school librarians across all grade levels to network and build relationships with their public library counterparts. NJLA’s Children’s Services Section and Young Adult Services Section are heavily represented at the conference. We all know that media specialists struggle, due largely to scheduling conflicts, to participate actively with these groups. Yet often the librarians who make up these sections are serving our own students as their patrons. Attending conference gives us a chance to see what these librarians are up to and to find ways to participate in initiatives - like the Garden State Book Awards or Read Across America activities - that can be implemented at both public and school libraries for the good of our students. Likewise, it gives the children’s and YA librarians of our state’s public libraries a chance to learn from us, finding out what they can do to better support our needs and efforts, and helping to improve library service to young people all around.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I find tremendous value in attending the NJLA annual conference simply because I believe it’s important that school librarians have a presence and a voice within the association. It’s true that New Jersey’s media specialists are lucky enough to have NJASL, an organization with its own valuable conference and unique set of goals. But NJLA represents librarians and libraries of all types, all over the state. In recent years, NJLA has taken great steps for school libraries: forming a School Libraries Taskforce, founding the Unlock Student Potential initiative, instating the I Love My School Librarian campaign, and fighting for legislation that would put qualified media specialists back in schools where they belong. But without input and participation from media specialists, these initiatives can’t grow or flourish.
While we may not all have the time to become more active participants in NJLA, one or two days of attendance at the conference can be a small way for us not only to show our support for the initiatives already in place, but to speak up to active NJLA members and association leadership about what else school librarians want and need. Attending a session, signing up for an email list, sharing our stories with members of sections and roundtables, or simply networking with different types of librarians at conference social events - all of these small actions can lead to big changes and big opportunities, but they are actions we can only take if we show up.
As it is every year, the NJLA 2018 Annual Conference is sure to feature valuable educational sessions, abundant networking opportunities, riveting keynote speakers, and fun social events. Each of these can be beneficial to New Jersey’s school librarians, if only we show up to take advantage of it all. Will you be there?
Darby Malvey is a Media Specialist at Clayton Middle School and High School, where she serves 6th-12th grade students in Gloucester County. Prior to becoming a school librarian, she worked as a youth services librarian in New Jersey’s public libraries for several years. Darby is Co-President of the NJASL Tri-County School Librarians affiliate group, a member of NJLA’s School Libraries Taskforce, and a Member at Large of NJLA’s Executive Board.