Evidence Based Librarianship (EBL)

This is a timely concept for librarians, given the state of education budgets around the world. I read the articles about getting the Principal onside with enthusiasm. I remember working in a government department library where the President was easily convinced of the library's worth because he was academic in nature and used it weekly. However when budget cuts were announced from higher up, I used very basic statistics from surveys and reference enquiry records as well as submissions from staff members, but this wasn't enough. As the cuts were political, I don't think I could have saved the library, but I want to be better prepared next time. According to Todd (2008) EBL“is an approach that systematically engages research-derived evidence, school librarian-observed evidence, and user-reported evidence in the ongoing processes of decision making, development, and continuous improvement to achieve the school’s mission and goals. These goals typically center on student achievement and quality teaching and learning.” It comes out of several beliefs including that student learning outcomes, as well as cultural, intellectual and social development can be measured; and that school libraries as " knowledge and information centres" are instrumental in helping achieve curriculum standards. He advocates student surveys, standards-based scoring guides and rubrics, formative and summative assessment tasks, skills measurements and ongoing performance -based assessments as useful to providing evidence. The Standards published by the American Association of School Librarians should provide a structure for the evidence which should be generated. My first thought is that I need more training in how to go about this, and that EBL would be time consuming, especially as Todd suggests that relying on other school library studies isn't good enough. Todd also asks how we might share locally generated school library research and highlight good examples. This will be a topic I return to, as it is vital to keeping school libraries staffed by teacher librarians and a great way of highlighting best practice; concentrating on activities which generate the most benefit to staff and students.