This study investigated how school librarians perceive their status within the school by Further research building upon this might further examine the relationship between head teachers, school management teams, and school librarians, as management emerged as the most influential factor of oneʼs self-perceived status.
School librarians in the UK have a lower status than librarians in other sectors, and research on school librarianship in the UK is sparse. Annual self-evaluation is one way the profession has tried to make itself more visible. Evidence-based school librarianship (EBSL) could assist school librarians in the UK improve their services, boost their profile, and build their portfolios as part of existing self-evaluation programmes. EBSL is an off-shoot of evidence-based librarianship, which aims to bridge the gap between research and practice, and encourages practitioners to conduct research in the workplace. Most of the current EBSL work is being done in the US, where school librarians are also typically trained teachers, however, EBSL is suitable for adaptation and use in the UK. Appropriate research methods must be chosen in order to make EBSL work in the UK, action research being one such method.
This paper summarises the author's MSc dissertation which was a co-winner of the 2009 LIRG student prize. It comprises two parts. The first part, a survey of school library salaries, was published in the May 2009 issue of Library and Information Update. This survey used Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain the pay grades and salaries of school librarians and public librarians across local authorities in Scotland. The second part of the dissertation discusses the findings of research conducted on the self-perceived status of secondary school librarians in the UK, with a focus on Scotland. This research will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Librarianship and Information Science.
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