On questions about teacher-librarians

I've just answered a couple of questions about teacher-librarian qualifications, and Robyn thought it might be useful to share it with you. Hence, this posting. Here's my answer to a rather vague question about whether teacher-librarians are teachers, or librarians, or both:

"re qualifications for teacher-librarians: I do know quite a bit about this, since I spent many years working as a teacher-librarian myself. In the government sector, teacher-librarians must have teaching qualifications, but not necessarily librarianship quals. This is due to a variety of issues, but most significantly duty of care requirements. Teacher-librarians teach extensively (or at least they should!!), and thus must be qualified teachers. In secondary schools, about 95% of teacher-librarians are qualified librarians. In primary schools, where many teacher-librarian positions are part-time, the figure is less, maybe 75 or 80%. ALIA would like to see all teacher-librarians with dual qualifications -- see https://webaccess.alia.org.au/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.alia.org.au/policies/teacher-librarians.html and http://www.alia.org.au/policies/teacher-librarian.standards.html

"I've just had a quick look at the NSW DET website, and see that they too ask for dual qualifications https://webaccess.alia.org.au/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/employment/teachnsw/brochures.htm%23librarian But I think the reality is that they cannot always fill positions with dually qualified people, especially in regional and rural areas -- though certainly this is their preference -- and must go with the teaching quals first.

"The non-government sector is mixed -- very difficult to give you a comprehensive overview, but I'd say the majority of teacher-librarians in this sector have dual quals.

"You might be interested in the work that Georgia Phillips and others are doing to promote teacher-librarianship and school libraries at The Hub -- see https://webaccess.alia.org.au/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://hubinfo.wordpress.com/ ALIA is certainly following this work with great interest. And of course ALIA and the Australian School Library Association work closely together."

As an afterthought, it's worth adding that in NSW, the DET has put substantial resources into helping teacher-librarians gain ALIA recognised qualifications -- in fact this is how I got my start in the industry, completing a Grad Dip in Teacher-librarianship at the then Kuring-gai CAE I(now UTS) way back in the mid 80's.

And please, don't take any of this as gospel, especially the figures -- they are very much guesstimates!