School Librarian Perceptions of Professional Identity

As the use of computerized searches for information increases, positions for professionally certified school librarians are being eliminated. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to gain insights into how school librarians create their professional identities and their sense of value by examining what informs their professional practice. Although school librarians positively impact student achievement, administrators faced with shrinking budgets are replacing librarians with paraprofessionals and computer labs with Internet access. If professionally certified school librarians are not valued and if librarians themselves do not find a way to articulate their value within the learning community, more positions will be eliminated, impacting both students and faculty. The interview questions for the study examined how experiences create professional identities and validation for nine professionally certified school librarians with no less than five years of experience. Moustakas' protocol for conducting phenomenological research was used. Findings from this study showed school librarians often lack current job descriptions, the teacher evaluation tools used to evaluate the librarian does not adequately capture the full array of their job duties, and their sense of mattering is complicated by the level of principal support. The implications for social change from this research included gaining an understanding of how school librarians can more effectively promote an understanding of their professional role and value in raising student achievement; thereby, strengthening advocacy for future sustainability of positions for professionally certified school librarians.