Personal Statement Reflection Paper

Joseph Koletsos
Olivet Nazarene University
Professional and Ethical Issues
LSCI 600
Roxanne Forgrave
March 6, 2014





Certification of Authorship: I certify that I am the author of this paper and that any assistance I received
in its preparation is fully acknowledged and disclosed in the paper. I have also cited any sources from
which I used data, ideas, or words, either quoted directly or paraphrased. I also certify that this paper was
prepared by me specifically for the purpose of this assignment.


Your Signature: _______________________Joseph Koletsos__________






Information literacy is a phrase that is shaping and transforming education at its core.
The idea of information literacy is the idea of being a life-long learner with individual goals and
the abilities to go locate, use, and evaluate the information that is available to us in the world
(Rubin, 2010). For school librarians this means helping students and teachers to become more
familiar with ways to both safely and effectively use the internet to enhance learning through the
objectives of the curriculum.
The American Library Association (ALA) has developed nine information literacy
standards to assist school librarians in the development of lessons to teach students and staff how
to become information literate in the 21
st
century. What has been discovered through this course
is that while these standards may be a guide for the school librarian to follow, there are several
road blocks to actually being able to implement them in the school. A job description for todays
school librarian continues to grow longer and longer and the tasks that the librarian is being
asked to complete becomes more and more diverse. Many librarians no longer have the
opportunity to be in the library and teach lessons to students as they did in the past. With the
increased demands of technology on schools the school librarians role is often one of
technology helper.
Librarians need to be proactive in their positions and be both vocal and visual leaders
within their school buildings. In-order to make a more information literate building; librarians
will need time to professionally develop staff to meet the needs of the 21
st
century learner and to
better get a feel for the needs of teachers as a whole. This will also provide time to promote the
libraries resources and the need to include the school librarian in curriculum development and
lesson planning.
As more schools cut spending and reduce staff for their library programs it becomes
essential for school librarians to promote the benefits of the library and the role that it plays in
developing both information literacy and intellectual freedom. These schools believe that the
abundance of technology allows for the cutting of certified librarians, but then these same
schools limit student access to certain technologies and/or information. When this happens there
is no professional to help support student learning and limited technology to access the
information on their own.
If administrators fear that students will not access the correct information that is out
there, thus limiting a students intellectual freedoms, and are unwilling to fully fund and support
their schools library programs, then they are setting their students, school, and communities to
fail. Librarians are needed to teach students how to access and evaluate information from both
sides of an issue so that a student can determine for themselves a view point that they can
support with credible information.
These rights or ideals are supported by the ALA in their Bill of Rights and by the
Freedom to Read document that we read for class. What should strike the reader of these
documents is that the ALA has been fighting this battle for much longer than the internet has
been around. Some of the philosophies that the ALA has established seem dated for today, but
the general idea of being able to access and share information that is unbiased and uncensored is
a battle that librarians need to continue to champion for the good of society.
The Library Bill of Rights was originally adopted in 1939 when the library really was
only a place of books. Todays libraries have to be not just places of literature, but information
hubs, technology experts, community programs, and on and on. Some of the ideas in the Bill of
Rights are more difficult to follow today because of the cost of some of these items and the
funding issues that libraries are facing. Being new to the profession I was left to wonder how the
ALA supports libraries, especially school libraries, when the ideas of censorship or banning
books presents itself.
These are important documents that reflect the ideals presented in the first amendment of
the Constitution of the United States, but they are outdated in some of their thoughts and
wording. The Freedom to Read document reads as a document written during the cold war era
that in parts sounds like the propaganda that parts of the document are trying to warn us about.
When you get past some of the language the goal of the document can be seen in a few important
phrases. Of these, the most important is sharing the true goal of education, Prepare the young to
meet the diversity of experiences in life to which they will be exposed, and to learn and think
critically for themselves, (Freedom to Read 1953).
It is funny that these thoughts were originally written over 60 years ago, but they are
probably truer today than they have ever been. The world that our students live in is more
diverse and changes much quicker than the world of previous generations. Students need to be
able to think critically and adapt to the constant change of life by evaluating information and
making sure it is reliable. We, as librarians, need to be the one to teach students these skills.
This is why the ability to read and understand material from credible and unbiased sources is
important and why fighting censorship is a battle librarians and teachers need to fight and win.
This course has opened my eyes to all the responsibilities of the school librarian. To be
truly effective in this position so much time and effort will need to be put into the job. Despite
the sacrifice the reward will be much greater. An effective school librarian can single handedly
help shape the learning and abilities of thousands of students who will then go out into the world
and create change. We are the link between school and the real world and the effort we put into
our job is vital to the success of our schools and communities.
References

American Library Association. (1996). Library bill of rights. Retrieved from
http://www.ala.org/advocacy/sites/ala.org.advocacy/files/content/intfreedom/lib
rarybill/lbor.pdf
American Library Association & Association of American Publishers. (2004, June
30). The freedom to read statement. Retrieved from
http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/statementspols/freedomreadstatement
Rubin, Richard E. Foundations of Library and I nformation Science. Third
ed. New York: Neal-Schuman, 2010.