Specialist or Generalist?
a debate held on September 22nd 2001 at YLG Conference
Chaired by Bob McKee
The motion under debate:
"This house believes that the need
for detailed knowledge of child development, children’s literature
and educational matters, necessarily implies a specialist element
within the staffing structure of a public library service."
For the motion:
Margaret Snook Head of Community Services, Greenwich
This is not a special pleading for the 99% of those of you here
today who are children’s specialists, but rather a plea for
the need to recognise that our library users are not homogeneous.
One size does not fit all — especially where children are
concerned. You cannot straitjacket children who should be in romper
suits and nappies into a suit and tie.
There are three areas that I’d like to look at this morning:
- communicating with children
- helping children to learn
- and finally a quick look at one of the main drivers within
local authorities at the moment: erosion of budgets and how
this affects the generalist / specialist debate.
Firstly, communicating with children. Well that’s easy isn’t
it? Just tell them what to do and if they don’t do it, shout
at them. Yes, I’m being deliberately flippant but the point
I want to make is this: do we accept that communicating with children
requires special skills?
Many of you will doubtless have worked with staff who say they
don’t like children and who refuse to work in a children’s
library. Why is it important that staff who are antipathetic to
children are not forced to work with them? In the modern world
of playstation games, videos, television everything is fast, vibrant,
noisy. I’ve heard teachers say that it is far more difficult
nowadays to get children to sit still and listen. Their attention
span is short; they demand instant gratification. In a situation
such as this, librarians need to be able to act as intermediaries,
to open up the world of possibilities that books and literature
can give children who are less and less likely in the sounds and
fury of everyday life to find for themselves. If staff are awkward,
aggressive, condescending, patronising or simply impatient, how
likely is it that they will succeed in engaging children?
I think one of the crucial points here is patience — patience
and understanding to take the time to work out where the child
is coming from and what they really want. Children do not look
at the world in the same way as we do as adults. They have different
perceptions of how things are.
One of the abiding memories of my childhood was when we visited
some friends of my grandfather’s — elderly people whose
conversation was of no interest to me. After listening politely
for over an hour, I felt it was time I entered the conversation
and so, running my finger over the lid of the piano I then proudly
announced "This piano needs dusting" as I had heard
my mother say many times. I couldn’t understand the shocked
and horrified response of my grandfather who swiftly brought the
visit to an end and bustled me out of the house. My perception
was not that I had been rude — I thought I was just making
polite conversation. We need staff who understand this perception
gap, who can empathise with children and go the extra mile —
and this cannot be taken as a given. I accept that being a children’s
librarian does not automatically guarantee that you have good
communication skills with children but how much worse to put someone
who either has no interest in or actively dislikes children into
a children’s library and expect the relationship to work
out.
So let’s move onto the second issue I wanted to look at:
helping children learn.
When children are learning to read it is a complex process. I
think as adults who now read fluently it is easy to forget how
steep a learning curve it is.
Children use a variety of techniques to piece together the sense
of a sentence. They don’t just spell out words phonetically,
they recognise the shapes of particular words, and they use the
context and pictures to help them towards understanding. It’s
very easy to discourage children if you don’t have an understanding
of the processes. Covering up the pictures with your hands for
example and saying no, no don’t use the picture to guess…
I’m not saying librarians should emulate teachers but it
is vital that children’s librarians have more than a nodding
acquaintance with how children learn to read. We’re not duplicating
teachers — they teach the mechanics but children’s librarians
provide the broader encouragement and access to a wider world
of books to stimulate an interest beyond the confines of whichever
reading scheme they are using at school.
There is a wealth of research, which demonstrates that children
who have access to books and are read to from an early age find
learning to read, and schoolwork generally, easier than those
who do not. The Bookstart initiative is based on this premise.
We need children’s librarians with the ability to encourage
and help, not only the children, but the parents as well, to find
the right books for their children.
Each year there are a great many books published for children
— but a great many of those will also fail signally to work
with children. We need specialists who have the time and the remit
to sort through the dross and find the really good books to recommend
to parents, teachers and children. If we look at choosing a picture
book for an under 5 for example: what is it that will make one
book stand out?
My all time favourite picture book is Jill Murphy’s Peace
at Last. Why does it work so well with children that I’ve
read it so many times I can now recite it from memory? It’s
a combination of qualities: the quality of the illustrations,
the use of repetition, the possibilities for interaction between
reader and child, the structure of the story, the humour which
also appeals to adults…. I could go on. But you can see that
it is not one single element but a whole range of issues, which
needs to be considered. I learnt to judge a children’s book,
not only by its cover, by working long and hard as a children’s
specialist, reading children’s books and using them with
children.
One of the difficulties in arguing for children’s specialists
and their role in helping children to learn is how to prove the
effectiveness or otherwise of the work they do. Resource has recently
sponsored some research into the impact of school libraries on
children’s learning. It looks at the issue of proving success
or otherwise and highlights specific influencing factors on children’s
learning in a school library context. Crucially it lists ‘interest,
enthusiasm, and appreciation shown by others’ and ‘appropriate
intervention to ensure progress could proceed’. In other
words, without someone there to help children, their learning
could be negatively affected.
So finally, the economics of the case: to use a rather crude
analogy: your doctor diagnoses a brain tumour. Who would you prefer
to operate: a brain surgeon or a general surgeon? I know whom
I would choose, although to stretch the analogy a little further,
a general surgeon would do in an emergency. And perhaps this is
the crux of the matter: the arguments for generalist versus specialist
are refined down to the need to respond to situations caused by
lack of money.
To adopt the language of the management consultants we all know
and love: are we simply "downsizing and optimising our operational
resources by eliminating the added-value to a key consumer segment"?
I have a deep and dark suspicion that many authorities have gone
down the generalist route, not because they truly believe it will
provide a better service, but because they see it as a way of
saving money, increasing the flexibility of their workforce and
facilitating their staff management.
I have first hand experience of services which kept specialists
and those which did not and having been able to compare both systems
at first hand I’ve come to the conclusion that, unless you
have staff with a specific brief for, and interest in, working
with children, few people will bother — the buck will be
passed — ‘no, that’s not my job’ — or
worse still, no one will even realise the service is missing.
And my other conclusion from this experience is that there needs
to be a voice for children at all levels within the organisation.
Yes, we need grass roots children’s librarians, but we also
need people at the highest level within the service checking out
every new development from the point of view of children. This
was particularly brought home to me a few years ago when internet
services were being introduced to libraries. In one particular
authority the proposed system had not been designed with children
in mind and was therefore not able to safeguard their interests.
When this was queried, one of the proposed solutions was to suggest
simply excluding children completely from using the internet.
The situation was resolved because senior managers fought for
the rights of the children to have equal access to that service.
We all have to live within the constraints of our budgets —
I know, I groan every time I look at our budget books and see
how little I have to play with. But notwithstanding, it is still
possible to create specialist posts — I know, because we’ve
just done it. And we did it in the firm and certain belief that
the children of the borough will be better served with a trained,
dedicated and professional children’s librarian taking the
lead on all aspects of services to children.
For after all, what is the point of a library? Is it just about
stamping books in and out, meeting performance targets and making
sure we don’t overspend at the end of the year? Or is it
about quality of life, lifelong learning, broadening horizons
and helping people reach their potential?
I believe that if we persist in putting any child-hating, or
at best indifferent, librarian, who thinks that Kipper is something
you have for breakfast, in a children’s library, we have
only ourselves to blame if parents, teachers and children stampede
past our doors, leaving us with an ageing, and declining user
base and a service which is increasingly irrelevant to the bulk
of the population.
Against the Motion:
Andrew Stevens Manager, City of Westminster Libraries
I agree with first part of the motion, I agree children are different.
They have different needs — many different needs. Children
are different and special; so are the librarians and others who
work with them. However, it is the second part of the motion that
is central to resolving this debate:
Accepting the need for knowledge of child development, children’s
literature and educational matters DOES NOT, I suggest NECESSARILY
imply a specialist element within the staffing structure of a
public library service
Children’s is one of several specialist areas in public
libraries:
Children’s services is a number of different specialisms:
How much does pre-school child have in common with the 13 year
old? Should we logically have specalisms within a specialism in
our structures? No that would be absurd. There is also the problem
that specialist structures create gaps in service delivery —
whatever happened to teenagers?
So how specialist are children’s librarians?
The skills we rightly value in children’s library staff
are the same as we should be valuing in all library staff:
-
Understanding of customer group
-
Understanding of community needs and context for the service
-
Extensive knowledge of resources — reading books and
literature
-
Promotion
-
Professional pride
- Initiative
That this is true is shown by the increasing blurring of distinctions
between children’s librarians and those responsible for adult
lending. Witness the expansion of adult reader development as
if it were a new phenomenon. It’s something you’ve been
doing for years, but because children’s is specialist it
had been overlooked.
How different from your work as children’s librarians is
that of the adult lending librarian? I believe the skills base
is much the same. You’re future lies in not being children’s
librarians but in being part of a wider team of learning support
librarians. You need — we need - you to have the support
and understanding of your colleagues in a framework where structures
support and encourage team working.
At both individual library and across the whole service in your
authority it is essential that we don’t build walls around
children’s librarianship, making arguments about process
and structure (boring, tedious and negative things), but celebrate
and share the skills and understanding you have with all professional
colleagues. Our profession is not so rich in resources and skills
that this can be achieved without a high level of team working.
This team approach will help us to:
-
See our community of users as a whole
-
Meet people’s changing and developing needs through
life — remember lifelong learning
-
Prioritise and target resources where they are most needed
- Make sure we don’t sideline the needs of teenagers or
20-35 year olds because they don’t fit our definition of
specialisms
This can help us strengthen our role in strategic learning and
community partnerships.
Be honest, how influential are children’s librarians in
school services and in Education departments now? You’re
not on your own — the library service needs to be influential
and we an only do this together.
Libraries are about:
- Learning skills and learning through life
- Helping people find and benefit from opportunities for self
improvement
- Information and helping people solve problems — connecting
the person and the resource
- Celebrating and promoting reading and literacy
This is your agenda too. It is not the responsibility ONLY of
librarians working with children to champion the importance of
children’s services. How well does it meet the needs of children
for another librarian or library assistant to take the view they
are not good with children and would rather not serve them? It
doesn’t work at management team level either.
It is the responsibility of all staff, both at the local community
level and at the library authority service-wide level: from the
library assistant dealing with children every day, to the senior
management team prioritising resource allocation. Without this
children’s services and your customers will be marginalised.
The reason children’s library services should not be sheltering
behind structures is precisely because your profession needs you.
We need you to help lead library services.
I urge you to break out of the narrow particularism of children’s
services into which others have for too long confined you so they
don’t have to feel challenged by you — and where you
for your part have been too comfortable in your difference. Break
out, be proud, and take your rightful place at the forefront of
public librarianship.
By opposing this motion you are showing your willingness to help
lead libraries to an exciting future — together, one public
library service.
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