Staffing Philosophy
As it should be in education, the staff are the most vital part of the libraries at Scotch and this is where we make the greatest investment in time and money. We believe the Teacher Librarians and our highly-qualified ancillary staff have a critical role in ensuring that our community is always provided with the most up-to-date information possible to facilitate the education of our students and support to the wider Scotch community.
In all libraries across Scotch we have qualified teacher librarians ensuring that the academic resources teachers and students require are assessed, optimised and available. We continue to find that the specialist skills of the Teacher Librarian working in concert with the teacher will always yield the best results, so each Teacher Librarian's primary role is to establish and maintain relationships across the College. This way, we can ensure that the teachers always feel supported in every request.
The nature of that support has changed over recent years in concert with the changing nature of the education system and its forms of delivery. At Scotch, all Teacher Librarians are dedicated to expertise in the fields of information technology, rich media production and research support, to comprehensively meet the varied requests from our community. These requests are never met with a 'no', as the libraries strategic commitment is to act as a gateway service to all areas of the school seeking information.
Finally, we understand that the primary function of the libraries is to ensure our boys at Scotch have as much academic support as possible to achieve their full potential. This means that all energy put into library functions is tempered by a strict understanding that this must result in a direct benefit to 'the boy in the room'. The day-to-day reality means that we work hard to augment the teaching programs, and when purchasing resources, each staff member actively works to ensure those materials are promptly accessible to the boys at the levels appropriate to their study.
Director of Information and Learning Technology
The Director of Information and Learning Technology provides the leadership for the teams of staff responsible for the Library, ILT Curriculum and Print services at Scotch College that meets the needs of the three sub-schools, and plays a strategic and transformational role in enhancing learning for boys in PP to Year 12.
Teacher Librarians
The Teacher Librarian's primary role is to support the teaching and learning that occurs in the room. That is, at Scotch the teaching staff in libraries spend less time administrating the traditional library service and more time working directly with teachers in support of the programmes. This support takes two forms, either providing expert-level teaching resources such as LibGuides, or more directly, supporting presentations and promotion of information literacy and the love of reading.
Course Support
The Teacher Librarian (TL) is involved in the creation of support material in and around the topics the students are studying. Staff can request library assistance in relation to a course or an assignment and the TL will meet with the teacher to design a LibGuide supporting the topic and framework. The classroom teacher then works in partnership with the TL to ensure that all students have access to materials at a choice of levels, allowing them to achieve their best.
Course support can also take the form of attending meetings and advising on current trends in learning, and more importantly, the TL has an overview across more than one subject area and can therefore link similar content and tasks. By being a part of these meetings the TL plays a direct role in the teaching and learning programme and therefore the library remains in close touch with the actual classroom work.
The final part of this is the importance of using library lessons to teach the specific information literacy skills to help students research, obtain, and filter information from the many sources available to them. This process is detailed in a scope and sequence document that is the backbone of the TL's dedicated library lessons.
Love of Literature and Reading
Another key role is that of promoting and maintaining the library, so that it fosters a love of literature and reading. This role means that the TL's knowledge of the collection is critical and all TLs maintain a high level of reading to ensure they can actively promote to students books that match their interests.
Obviously, it is important to have highly qualified personnel for this role, but it is increasingly difficulty to locate staff who have the necessary aptitude for the expanding range of roles that need to be supported by the TL. This means means that often the traditional skill sets of Teacher Librarians fall outside of our requirements and so at Scotch we have adapted to a mix of teachers with library and/or complementary qualifications.
Administration Officer - Resources
The Administration Officer - Resources is a key member of the Senior School Library team and is responsible for day-to-day operations, purchasing for the libraries and departments, coordinating with all ancillary staff regarding library and LMS practices, and liaising with our sister school in relation to our shared LMS and digital resources. They are also responsible for administering the College's digital subscriptions for staff and students.
Library Services Specialists
The Library Services Specialist at Scotch is a critical member of the team, degree-qualified and adept in library operations including cataloging processes and procedures. They are not hidden in a back room but are at the library front desk, both supporting the students directly through borrowing and advice, and supporting the teachers with meticulous identification and cataloguing of resources of differing media types. This role has also redefined the media skills needed for the position as they are responsible for the updating of library front-facing systems—such as the LibGuides pages—and creating digital displays.
Library Services Assistant - Graphics
With the increasing number of requests that the library contribute to modern curriculum materials, the position of Library Services Assistant - Graphics was established in support of the creation of internal curriculum resources.
This is a support role to the Director of ILT, primarily with projects driven from a more strategic overview. Specifically the Library Services Assistant - Graphics works to ensure that any product sent from the library has a 'look and feel' to provide the community with final product of impressive quality. Specific examples of this role exist in the creation of of templates for LibGuides and other rich media projects employing the media of video and photography.
From what was originally a Library Services Officer role, the demands and higher standards of the Scotch library prompted a title change and a redefined set of skills to furnish sufficient in-house expertise for future library projects.
Direct Reports Breakdown
Library
The library team, regardless of physical location, all report to the Director of ILT in a flat structure to ensure that each individual has direct access to the strategic operations of the library spaces. While day-to-day tasks are given to the Library Services Specialists via the Teacher Librarians, each member of the library team has regular one-on-one meetings with the Director of ILT.
Information Learning Technology Education Specialist
At Scotch the ILT Education Specialists work as a team across PreK - 12 with a focus on coaching and supporting individual classroom teachers in collaboration with the curriculum leadership team.
The Print department handles all printing, postage and deliveries across the College. This area also reports to the Director of ILT with the intention of optimising printing habits, and the updating and conversion of resources into the Library Management System.