Borrowed Time
On school librarians, the hours that get away from them, and what they would do with just one more.
I've been thinking about time lately, not the amount of it, which never changes, but the shape of it. Twenty-four hours is twenty-four hours, whoever you are. What differs is how full or empty those hours feel, and, more quietly, who gets to decide what fills them. In your own life, that decision is usually yours to make. At work, it's often already been made for you. Menial, pedestrian, time-consuming tasks eat away at the hours you'd rather spend on what actually matters. I think about that a lot these days.
I've now spent quite some time speaking to librarians in school, public and academic libraries, and though there are many similarities, there's one thing that really sets school librarians apart: a constant, gnawing shortage of time.
They say things like:
If I had more time I would work with more outreach, visit classrooms, work with source criticism, create book clubs and read with the little ones…
If I had more time I'd really like to work more with the relevance of the collection, some real weeding, break out new themes and genres, and would also get around the inventory I put off for years!
Hundreds of students all needing a book at the same time at the beginning of term. I wish I had time to spend not only with the ones with the loudest voices but also with the ones struggling with their academics, and to be honest, I have no time for the ones exceeding either!
And then reality happens. They all tell me they have great plans lined up for the school year, but then three classes visit and leave their mark, the printer breaks down, little Sophia is looking for the books she lost, and the plans are pushed aside, rarely realised.
It's quite clear that school librarians are well aware of all the things they are not doing, and that what they really want is to spend more time with the students. The one-to-one meeting is by far the most efficient and rewarding way to make sure it is the thing that actually sticks. I happen to know someone is working on it.
What would you do with one more hour, five days a week?
Two book places I visited this week
Librarian
A librarian who wrote her dissertation on integrated library systems, and now helps build one. She is making sure the shift to AI is threaded with care, so it works for librarians and the communities they serve, not in place of them.