BubbleUp Take5: Connecting with Other School Librarians

Education today is so much bigger than our libraries, our schools and districts. At the same time, our jobs as school librarians are often lonely--we might be the only one in our building (or in several buildings), we may not have clerical assistance, or a larger team for support. In fact, even with many of those things (I am incredibly lucky to be one of two librarians in my school and part of a resource-laden school district with a fantastic coordinator who tirelessly advocates for and supports our programs), I think we have a real professional obligation to keep learning and to expand our growth beyond our school and district levels. 

There are so many ways to connect with professional colleagues, but here are 5 places to start. And if all of these are new to you, choose one and test the waters.

1.  Twitter. Sign up, add a bio and a photo, keep your account unlocked and use it for the professional stuff. Follow librarians and other educators (follow at least 100 people to start). Lurk on a chat. And then when you are comfortable, jump in. If Twitter is completely new to you, take a look at Corey's post on getting started. 

A few chats to explore:

• #vaslchat. Virginia school librarians and beyond (by no means limited to those from the Commonwealth! We are always happy to have everyone join in). 2nd Tuesday of each month, 8pm EST
• #tlchat. A chat for teacher librarians, 2nd Monday of each month at 8pm EST.
• #mslibchat. Newly organized, this chat for middle school librarians had great energy the first time around. It is on the 2nd Monday of each month, 9pm EST.

You can review a huge list of education chats at this site -- pick one or two that appear interesting and see what they have to offer. 

My best tip for chat participation is to use TweetDeck. Sign in using your Twitter account and set up the following three columns (use the big + sign):

• your notifications (so you can see direct interactions with you)
• the chat hashtag (so you can see everything)
• the moderator (so you don't miss the questions as they come up).

2.  The School Librarians Workshop Group on Facebook. This is a group coordinated by Hilda K. Weisberg. Members post links, questions, and are always incredibly helpful with ideas and responses. This is a great, safe space to learn and get support from colleagues who do what you do each and every day.

3.  TLVirtualCafe. Monthly webinar-based conversations designed to connect school librarians with each other and issues and content that matter. Held the first Monday of each month from September through May, these sessions are also always archived and incredibly valuable even if you can't make the live webinar.

4.  LM_NET. The most high-traffic listserv in the school library profession. If you subscribe, I recommend setting up a rule in your e-mail so that your LM_NET messages are all put in one place, letting you check them at your leisure. If, like me, you prefer NOT to get it via e-mail, you can always look at postings via the archives site -- the real benefit to the archives is that they are searchable.

5.  Google Communities. Like Twitter, there is a huge range of communities relevant to our field. You likely already use Google for ALL OF THE THINGS, so why not hop into communities? Those I tend to check regularly are close to home (internal to my district), but a few broader communities are Global TL: Librarians without Borders and TL Chat. There are others that are more location specific (state or district) that might make more sense for you!

Where do you find support beyond your library? How do you share ideas and get support? I would love to learn about other places that help you connect!

Glad to have you in my PLN,
Gretchen

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You might also like:

• New Teacher? Start Here! (August 16 2016)
• New Librarian? Start Here! (August 9, 2016)
• BubbleUp Take5: Professional Growth through Summer Reading (June 24, 2016)
• It's Never Too Late to Tweet (June 7, 2016)