by Kaitlyn R. Carpenter, MLS, MLIS

Introduction – A Moment of Tension

Sitting in the cafe with a colleague I admire, I watched as she tore my first attempt at a curriculum vitae (CV) apart. Every criticism held an undertone of ‘I know you do more than this’ and ‘this is a CV of just a school librarian’. Her daughter recently graduated from the high school I have been serving as the solo librarian at for the past three years, so she was well aware of the extent of work I put into my current position. She gave me the valuable advice that the hardest part of my transition from high school librarian to an academic librarian would be “breaking the bias” because so many librarians are siloed in their own areas that we each have our own preconceived notions of what each other does. Next, she gave an example of what many academic librarians would think when seeing my current CV, “How cute, you gave little Jenny a romance book!” This comment both raised my hackles ready to fight and defend school librarians, but also made me hang my head in defeat and think ‘yeah, who am I kidding trying to make this leap? I am obviously not qualified.’ As a school librarian, I feel this dichotomy often—the feeling of fierce independence and confidence, while also feeling that I have no value as a librarian outside of the k12 environment.

Part I: The Work of School Librarianship

There are many challenges faced by school librarians, from state wide censorship to cultivating relationships with the ever-revolving door of teachers in public education, but one of the biggest challenges is so often overlooked- being the solo librarian supporting the library where all decisions, instruction, and management fall on your individual shoulders. This burden is incredibly heavy, but nearly every school librarian I have ever met thrive under this pressure.

No one librarian can exemplify the day in the life of a school librarian. Woolls & Coatney (2018) explain that “school librarians are available to the entire school community: its students, teachers, administrators, and parents; and all these users are a part of the design of the library program” (p.4).

I have worked as a school librarian for six years, working at two different schools—each serving between 2,500 and 3,300 students and 200+ faculty and staff every year. I have always felt incredibly lucky to become a high school librarian right out of my MLS rather than starting as an elementary librarian, working my way up to the upper grade levels as many of my colleagues have. With this said, I am going to attempt to describe the complex efforts of school librarians, but I will not be able to encompass all perspectives as my experience is limited to high schools.

In Woolls & Coatney’s (2018) The School Library Manager, the authors break down the role of school librarian into six distinct sections: Education Program, Assessment and Evaluation, Business Management, Library Facility, Informational Resource Management, and Managing personnel. I will use these specific facets to describe the complexities that school librarians face as the sole librarian in charge.

Education Program

While reader’s advisory is a big part of school librarianship, “giving Jenny a romance book,” having a robust collection to provide access to leisure reading and academic support is just the first step of a school library program.  Unlike academic librarians, who often work on a subject liaison model, school librarians support every content area by being the expert in pedagogy and research rather than being a subject matter expert.

In my six years as a high school librarian, I have been fortunate to work with nearly every subject area in a variety of capacities from—building suggested reading lists for dual credit teachers who would like to change their required readings to better engage their students; to engineering design through the bridge design project where student research various designs, structural failures, and how scarcity and demand impacts materials for construction; to sociology capstones where I support students through the entire research lifecycle to conduct literature reviews and empirical research. I have served as an instructional coach for new teachers, technology integration specialist for tenured teachers who struggle to adopt new educational technology and learning management systems, and I have acted as first line defense to help students and parents troubleshoot technology during the COVID-19 pandemic as we transitioned to remote and hybrid learning. All of this is to show the wide variety of educational supports school librarians offer, and my experience is not unique or out of the norm.

In the past year, I have had a significant increase (16%) in requests for instruction resulting in 401 lessons supporting 25+ teachers during the previous academic school year. As any librarian who collaborates would point out, navigating various personalities during collaboration can be a fine art. This is only the first facet of a school librarian’s responsibilities.

Assessment & Evaluation

The rise of assessment and evaluation is not new to any library as our world becomes more obsessed with evidence of our value. As shown in major areas like Houston, TX and many other major cities, school libraries are seen as luxuries that not every school deserves to have. This puts the librarian in the position to “prove our value, show our impact, and demonstrate our worth to external audiences” and “adopt a practice of assessment firmly rooted in justification” (Arellano Douglas, 2020, p.47). This has been a long practice in school libraries as our jobs become more precarious, especially in areas of high censorship and budget crises.

In the past two years in Houston, TX where I work, I have gone from a school district that had nearly all school libraries staffed (274) to only 70 active libraries and only 23 with certified librarians (Mizan, 2025). This has put immense pressure on using assessment and evaluation as a means to prove our worth. The reason I have the exact number of lessons taught and faculty collaborated with is due to a hyper awareness of being able to rationalize my position. I can tell you how many students have visited my library each year, and the percent of the entire population have been in the library through class lessons or social times.

I am constantly arming myself with facts, figures, and statistics to pull out of my pocket when asked what I really do, but also to improve my practice. For example, I know that I had about 30,000 student visits (gate count) accounting for 2,178 students out of 3,200 students (68%), but also as a part of my practice I look at how many of each grade level visits to identify students that I should focus on next year to reach the other 32% of students. I know that ninth grade and eleventh grade students are the most likely to visit the library, accounting for 56% of student visits, which allows me to focus more instructional or outreach efforts to the tenth grade and twelfth grade students. Similarly, I use assessments like surveys to assist in collection development to ensure that the collection best represents the needs of the users I serve. Yet, this still feels like it is only scratching the surface of assessment and evaluation a school librarian does within their position.

Business Management

In both academic and public libraries, the business side and fiscal management is assigned to specific librarians or have a separate department that ensures the library is adhering to the budget. Many librarians only deal with budgets within these contexts or if they are in charge of ordering for their subject area or department. School librarians serve as the sole budgetary authority for their library, if they have a budget at all. I have been in both situations, where I had a decent, if not healthy, yearly budget, and where I do not have a yearly budget but get a seldom large infusion for significant improvements. These budgets, while often dominated by physical and digital titles, also encompass furniture, supplies, equipment, marketing materials, and emergency funds.

In public education, I have been fortunate that I have worked with large schools because often the budgets are determined by ‘per pupil unit’ (PPU) which means the larger the student population the larger the budget. This often leaves elementary and middle school librarians in a bigger budgetary bind than most, resulting in a large portion of their time dedicated to fundraising through book fairs and other programs to bring in money for basic library supplies. Sometimes there are miracles when a district throws money to libraries, like when Texas Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding was used to update collections and recuperate the lost titles from COVID-19 lockdown, but this is not a common occurrence.

This facet also includes management of spaces and programs available to the library community. The library is a community space, of which the librarian is the facilitator and guarantor of the space. With this, there is extensive scheduling and planning to ensure equitable access to those who need to use the space. Often the librarian is told the day of an event that the library will be used and is no longer accessible to the rest of the school be it for testing or professional development. This all takes striking a delicate balance between prioritizing the library and its services, while keeping administration satisfied.

Library facility

Evans and Greenwell (2020), in their Management Basics for Information Professionals, explain that “throughout their existence, libraries have been places where people congregate, think, discuss, learn, and collaborate” (p.274). Evans and Greenwell go on to recognize the shift to specialized spaces in public and academic libraries (p.274), but unfortunately, they often leave the school library out of the conversation despite the fact that they are, in my mind, the original ‘specialized space’ as they are curated for specific audiences and goals in mind. The school library will look different for every level and every school as it should be “responsive to the needs of students and teachers” and school librarians are “assessing the functionality and relationship between the space and the program” (Woolls & Coatney, 2018, p.117).

I have been very fortunate to be able to reimagine a high school library through redesigning and donations, but I have also been able to open a new school library after new construction with a pre-existing collection. My first high school library had not been updated since 1998, when the school moved the library from a classroom on a second floor to a renovated gymnasium. When I came in I knew that the library needed a major face lift, but I also knew that any changes would likely need to be cosmetic at first to show administration the vision before I asked for any monetary investment in the space. In a short amount of time through weeding (which was much needed) and a major shifting project, I was able to open up more flexible space which allowed for more classroom and small group areas. This was able to be done quickly because, other than my administration, I was the only person who needed to approve of the changes. In my three years at this campus, I was able to oversee major project management, as I orchestrated replacing all of the perimeter shelving with updated cantilever shelving (worth over 40,000 dollars), and as I created a major organization shift from traditional Dewey classification for my fiction to genre-based collections that allowed for better browsing and discoverability.

In my second position, I opened a new library after construction with an existing collection that had been housed in storage for three years. When I took the position I knew that this would be a big challenge, but I had been looking for a challenge. One of the major questions my administration asked me, “When do you want the books delivered?” my answer was simple, “as soon as possible.” Despite being housed in a ‘temporary building’, as the construction would not be finished until December of that school year, I wanted to be able to evaluate the collection and start getting books in kids’ hands. This decision allowed me to begin circulating books and get to know the collection quickly, as I knew that I was getting a windfall through ESSER funding which would allow me to update my collection at the end of the school year. When planning the space, I had to plan for the existing collection as well as the ESSER funded books and consider the physical uses throughout the space. This experience allowed me to consider how to best utilize the library and its spaces to serve the patrons.

While this is probably one of the benefits of being a solo-librarian, this can also be a lot to take on. Construction, reimagining, marketing, and advocacy all become a part of the daily job to ensure that the library remains open and available to all. I truly appreciate having been able to accomplish both of these opportunities early on in my professional career, but this is often an overseen accomplishment that many school librarians have.

Informational Resource management

“One of the traditional responsibilities of information professionals in all types of libraries is identifying, evaluating, acquiring, and organizing information resources to meet the needs of their patrons” (Woolls & Coatney, 2018, 131). This concept is one that every information professional and librarian is familiar with whether it be in print or digital spaces, or both. This is common ground between all librarians no matter what the collection development looks like, if that is children’s and young adult (YA) literature or special collections.

One area of informational resource management that school librarians are well versed in, while it is becoming a burgeoning factor in all libraries, is censorship and formal challenges of library materials. As the US becomes more politicized and divisive, this challenge has spread to public libraries and even academic libraries that serve the public. While in public and academic libraries, the collection development policy “involves the identification, selection, acquisition, and evaluation of library resources for a community of users” (Gilman, 2017, 102), there is often little guidance on reconsideration and challenges. The American Library Association (ALA) selection policy toolkit provides procedures for handling formal complaints separated by type of library: the public library procedures involves 8 straight forward steps, the school library procedures include 16 steps with six of those steps subdivided into multiple sub-steps to follow for a formal complaint, and academic libraries have one very generic paragraph describing procedures for a formal complaint (Formal Reconsideration | ALA, 2017). This shows the glaring differences in both frequency and preparedness for reconsideration between the three major types of libraries. School librarians are aware of this issue from the beginning, and unfortunately may need to share this knowledge and experience with other librarians in the future.

In my experience, I had initially not expected much practice in the reconsideration of materials as a high school librarian, because before 2020 the majority of challenges took place in elementary schools. After COVID-19 there has been a rise in challenges, according to ALA’s report on the “Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2024” there has been “a sharp spike in censorship attempts in libraries” since 2021, and “In 2024, ALA recorded the third highest number of book challenges since tracking began in 1990; ALA documents 821 attempts to censor library books and other materials in 2024 across all library types” (Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2024 | Banned Books, 2023). Unfortunately, this is an area school librarians are well versed in, but is on the rise in all areas of librarianship due to politicized groups and decision makers.

Another area of school librarianship that is more common in all libraries is the handling of digital collections and databases to ensure access to up-to-date and accurate information for patrons. School libraries databases and digital collections are often not as specialized as academic or public libraries, but the budgetary constraints and challenges of providing access to academic materials is still a well-known challenge. As budgets shrink, librarians have to think outside the box to ensure fair and equitable access for our patrons. Often this is through consortiums and resource sharing, but school librarians struggle to be able to initiate resource sharing because of the subscription models and methods that any resource sharing must be enacted at the district level. This can be especially tough when working in a district that is actively removing librarians from schools.

One way that I have worked to increase access for my students as a high school librarian was to create a research tool index for my students which included district provided resources, open access resources, subscription or freemium resources, and various educational institutions and governmental institution resources to provide further access for research. This is an example of how school librarians are having to find ways to make the impossible possible to ensure free access to information. This is not to say that public and academic librarians do not do this as well, but they often have more help, while being the solo-school librarian creates more pressure but also breeds innovation.

Managing personnel

The school librarian, if they are lucky, gets to manage both staff personnel like a clerk or paraprofessional and often student workers. Not only do they manage these personnel that they supervise, “the successful school librarian possesses the management skills needed to interact with everyone in the school as well as parents and others throughout their community” (Woolls & Coatney, 2018, 149). School librarians often step into this managerial role from the first day in the library, rather than as a step in their career growth. According to Evans & Greenwell one of the most succinct definitions of management is from Mary Parker Follett (1941) “management is the art of getting things done through people” (Evans & Greenwell, 2020, 5). This definition rings true for many librarians.

In the two libraries that I have led, I have had the opportunity to manage three different professional staff and a multitude of student workers with varying success. While the school librarian is often the only certified librarian within their building, if they are lucky they will have help to be able to accomplish the goals and vision of the library. The library staff hold institutional knowledge that anyone new to a position would take years to find out. In my two positions I have managed staff that had a variety of experience within the library: one who had been in the position six months prior to my taking the librarian position, one I hired myself with little library experience, and one who had been at the campus for 25 years and retired this spring. I have learned that communication is key, and that “all staff members including students, and volunteers who can work independently, should be allowed to establish how to do a job once the job has been defined” (Woolls & Coatney, 2018, 152). I still regard myself as one of the lucky ones, since many of my counterparts in other districts or different levels like elementary librarians, will never have library staff outside of students and volunteers. This often means managing your time and energy very efficiently to ensure that all needs are met while avoiding burn out.

When moving into academic and public libraries, as a manager you might supervise more staff than school librarians but the sentiment that “people – the staff – are the essential element of a successful library” remains the same across all types (Evans & Greenwell, 2020, 189).

Part II: Preparing for the Pivot

Now that I have waxed poetic about all that school librarians do, I must tell you that I intend to leave it behind. In 2023, I was awarded my district’s ‘Library Program of the Year’ after my first year within my new campus and district. It was a recognition of the hard work and dedication I have been putting into my professional practice and the lengths I was willing to go to provide high quality library services to my patrons. While this award has been the highlight of my career, I was left with the feeling “where do I go from here?”

School librarianship does not have many opportunities for career growth, since you are at the peak of your profession unless you would like to become a district library director. With that said, many library director positions are few and far between as there is only one per district. Just as I had when I chose to go back to school to become a librarian after teaching, I sat myself down and reflected on what I loved about my job and what I could live without. Some things that I love about my position as a school librarian: working with both adults and young adults; creating innovative ideas for teaching research and concepts; collaborating with others; diving into the data to make decisions for the benefit of my community; presenting regionally and statewide to other professionals to improve their practice and garner new ideas. Some things that I could live without as a librarian: the intense political environment of k12 education; the feeling of being the sole provider of library services; the questioning feeling that if I left- would they even replace me; and the lack of support for my professional and intellectual efforts at regional and state levels. So after weighing my options, I decided that it might be time to consider a transition to academic librarianship because I could continue doing all of the things I love about my current position, but I would no longer be the ‘Atlas holding the world on his shoulders’ or in this case the library. In academia, professional service and academic contributions are expected and rewarded rather than ignored as they can be in k12 education. This looked like the perfect new challenge, but I found it was not one for the weak.

When I began looking at academic jobs in 2023, I found that despite my accolades and variety of experiences, I was not being considered. The first initial barrier was my MLS degree. For those who may not know, those who are looking to be a school librarian have many more options for their masters due to both ALA accredited and American Association of School Librarians (AASL) recognized and Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) accredited programs. The problem is that AASL recognized programs are often promoted to educators by their districts, but they are not always ALA accredited. When I went back for my initial masters program, I attended an AASL recognized program because it had been promoted by my school district with potential discounts, and it was the only MLS program that was fully online in my state at the time. Soon after applying I found out I was moving across the country, so I never applied to another program. I was assured throughout the program that they had graduates who were working as public and academic librarians as well, and that since AASL is a subsidiary of ALA then it was ‘technically’ ALA accredited.

While this may not have been a flat out lie, this was the reason my resume was tossed nearly every time. I had even gotten to an interview and received the nicest rejection I have ever gotten that essentially said- ‘You are so great, but… the AASL MLS means you are not qualified for a professional librarian position’. I was floored. What do you mean I am not qualified to be a ‘professional’ librarian? I already am one, right? As I have spelled out above all of the things that school librarians do, I found that despite my degree in Library Science and years of experience, this simply was not enough to overcome this perceived gap in education.

As I continued working in my library for the next few years, I found myself considering leaving libraries all together because I could not imagine going back to school and essentially doing the entire masters over again, to be considered a ‘professional.’ It felt like a slap in the face to my original degree, my experience, and my contributions to the field. It felt like the award, years as an officer in my state association, and 20+ presentations in the few short years as a librarian amounted to nothing. I looked into moving into EdTech spaces, data visualization, marketing, and publishing but none of them felt right.

In 2024 after receiving another “You are great! But…” email, I started looking into getting another MLS/MLIS from an ALA accredited school. I wanted to do my research and find the right program that would allow me to use my current experiences and possibly not retake every single class. This was when I found that not all ALA programs were equal. I found that some schools that had ALA accredited MLIS program, did not have a school librarian program but instead rerouted the applicant to an AASL M.Ed from the same school which means that any school librarian that graduates from that ALA accredited school would still not be a graduate of an ALA accredited program. Thus far I have yet to find any studies that look into how many currently working certified school librarians hold ALA accredited versus AASL recognized MLS degrees. But anecdotally, I would say 30-40% of the school librarians I know, personally, attended an AASL recognized program. According to a recent survey of 76 Texas school librarians, 35% do not hold an ALA accredited MLS/MLIS or equivalent—12 of which hold an M.ED and a school librarian post-master’s certificate and 15 hold an MLS/MLIS from a non-ALA accredited but AASL recognized program^[1]. I also want to recognize that I am privileged to be able to consider getting a second master’s degree, while many of my fellow educators cannot do so.

I chose to attend University of Rhode Island’s accelerated ALA accredited MLIS program which allowed me to individualize my studies, and finish within a year due to the 7-week quarter system that the program offers. I only took about 2 courses that fully overlapped with my first masters because I focused on a leadership emphasis in my studies. I was able to complete this full program within one calendar year as a full-time student as I worked as a full-time librarian.

Now, I have graduated with my ALA accredited MLIS, but I am now asked to break the bias as illustrated in my introduction. This entire process has forced me to keep my ego in check and recognize where I can improve. But it has also led me to believe even more fiercely that school librarians are worthy and should be valued as academic equals to all kinds of librarians.

Part III: Bridging the Gap

Reflecting upon my coursework in my second masters program, I found that I kept bringing up how school librarianship has been left out of the academic conversations. Part of this might be that school librarians do not contribute as much to academic conversations because our day to day does not give this much value, but we should not be left out of the conversation. Filgo and Towers (2021) list the mindsets for academic liaison librarians in their book Liaison Engagement Success: A Practical Guide for Librarians, which are adaptability, emotional intelligence, soft skills, empathy, listening, relationship building, and communication (p.21-28). Those authors cite Jaguszewski and Williams (2013) that “an engaged liaison seeks to enhance scholar productivity, to empower learners, and to participate in the entire lifecycle of the research, teaching, and learning process” (p. 4). This encompasses the same principles as school librarianship just with a different audience.

School librarians, while they are often generalists, are great examples of embedded librarianship and interdisciplinary research support. While many still implement the one-shot method of instruction, which is still the dominant form in most academic environments, many also have the examples of being a co-designer within a variety of curriculum and instructional design. School librarians in most states are required to have been a certified teacher and taught for a minimum of two years before becoming a librarian, which means that many have been entrenched in teaching methods that can serve a wide variety of audiences. One of the superpowers of a school librarian is that they are a generalist, and use pedagogy and research to be able to adapt to any subject matter.

Honestly, there are so many strengths that school librarians are not recognized for that it is hard for me to put into words all of which I will take with me into the world of academia.

Conclusion: What I’m Taking with Me

One of my colleagues explained how libraries serve a human throughout their life; the public library offers services for early childhood, then they send those children to school librarians that further their love of reading and teach them critical thinking and research, then school librarians send those students to college and university librarians and sometimes special librarians, then those humans return to the public library or utilize corporate, medical, or law libraries within their lives. Libraries are one ecosystem that contribute to the success of each other. In the recent publication, Strengthening Library Ecosystems: Collaborate for Advocacy and Impact, Kathy Lester says, “Our patrons – all of them- need to understand the library ecosystem and how school, public, and academic libraries complement one another to ensure library services for every resident from infancy through adulthood” (Hand et al., 2024, 146).

Part of the goal of this article is to invite more school librarians to the scholarly conversation, and to be welcomed by our other librarians because we are not ‘just’ school librarians. We are a part of the library ecosystem that enriches our profession.

References

Arellano Douglas, V. (2020). Moving from Critical Assessment to Assessment as Care. Communications in Information Literacy, 14(1), 46-65. https://doi.org/10.15760/comminfolit.2020.14.1.4

Evans, G. E., & Greenwell, S. (2020). Management Basics for Information Professionals. American Library Association.

Filgo, E. H., & Towers, S. (2021). Liaison Engagement Success: A Practical Guide for Librarians. Bloomsbury Academic.

Formal Reconsideration | ALA. (2017, December 25). American Library Association. Retrieved June 18, 2025, from https://www.ala.org/tools/challengesupport/selectionpolicytoolkit/formalreconsideration

Gilman, T. (Ed.). (2017). Academic Librarianship Today. Bloomsbury Academic.

Hand, D., Johns, S. K., Robertson, M., & Duffee, E. (2024). Strengthening Library Ecosystems: Collaborate for Advocacy and Impact. ALA Editions.

Jaguszewski, J., & Williams, K. (2013). New Roles for New Times: Transforming Liaison Roles in Research Libraries. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/169867

Mizan, N. (2025, May 17). HISD has 23 librarians for 274 schools after discipline area shift. Houston Chronicle. Retrieved June 17, 2025, from https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/education/hisd/article/hisd-library-book-review-20317284.php

Top 10 Most Challenged Books of 2024 | Banned Books. (2023, April 21). American Library Association. Retrieved June 18, 2025, from https://www.ala.org/bbooks/frequentlychallengedbooks/top10

Woolls, B., & Coatney, S. (2018). The School Library Manager: Surviving and Thriving. Bloomsbury Academic.

Note

^[1] The data from the informal survey was collected via google forms and sent through TLA Member Engage discussion board for TASL the school library division of TLA. The survey was open between 6/18/25 through 7/2/2025, receiving 76 total responses. Data is available upon request.