I agree - I think it's probably that they feel it's harder to find the relevant information among the jumble of results an internet search can throw up. This is why critical literacy is even more important in the age of digital information!

I've always thought LIS courses should address this. Another possibility is that Education Departments in universities could provide courses for librarians. It's a crucial skill that most of us don't get any formal training in.

I would recommend this to teachers as well as school librarians. It isn't very expensive or time consuming to read, it presents the topic in a clear and accessible way and sets out ideas for developing learning activities in school.

@Elizabeth Yes, critical literacy is absolutely vital to the success of the curriculum. It clearly underpins the aims of Curriculum for Excellence in Scotland, certainly, and this is a way in for school librarians to collaboration with teachers. I felt that the clarification of the difference between information literacy and critical literacy was also potentially useful in persuading teachers that librarians can help pupils develop capabilities beyond than the traditional "information skills" with which the school librarian is associated.

@Elizabeth I would agree - I think we're all aware that "fake news" has been around for a long time but is now much more pervasive. What is really needed is a way forward for librarians to address the issue and this book is a great starting point.

Thanks for this session and for highlighting this interesting piece of research, Elizabeth!

We all need to be aware that no source is entirely without bias. Some are more reliable than others, but even these need to be examined critically. I think encouraging students to examine and be aware of their own biases is also important. We all bring our own point of view to our interpretation of the information we find.

@Alison Edwards I agree - while technical ability is necessary, an ability to think critically about information is also essential.

@Elizabeth Developing good questions is a fundamental research skill and one that all young people going on to Higher Education will need. It's also a skill that helps develop more general information literacy. I think it would be really helpful to build this exercise in to investigative work across the curriculum from an early stage. It's a great opportunity for collaboration between librarians and teachers and a way to open up cross-professional conversations about the learning process.

@Annie I think you're right about this. The closure of a library is easier to contest because the impact on users is obvious. It's harder to argue when your own post is being axed, but the library isn't being closed. The SLT will put forward a plan for teachers to oversee the library, pupil volunteers to carry out the day-to-day running, etc. This is where raising awareness of the importance of professional library staff comes in. There hasn't been much understanding of this in schools or among the general public - hopefully this is changing!

@Annie I didn't have much contact with parents as a school librarian. I don't think many schools see library provision as a key "selling point" with parents. If awareness of the potential of a good school library is raised among the general public by the Great School Libraries Campaign and our National Strategy here in Scotland, perhaps this could change.

@Annie I agree it's very important to know what's going on. The school librarian needs to keep a close watch on minutes of SLT meetings as well as school policies and news bulletins.

@Elizabeth Thanks for this! I'll check it out.

That looks like a wonderful resource, Elizabeth! I've bookmarked it for future reference. I really enjoyed your interview, too. School librarians talking to teachers about what they offer is really important - as you say, so many have a complete misconception of the role. I have quite a few resources I use regularly for CPD, but one that stands out at the moment is Teen Librarian (http://teenlibrarian.co.uk, ), run by Matt Imrie, who is a youth librarian in the USA and former UK school librarian. This web site is absolutely full of ideas and advice on all sorts of things from books for teenagers to library displays and all aspects of providing a library service for young people. There's also a regular newsletter, Teen Librarian Monthly. I find it's a great site for helping me keep in touch with YA fiction and school library issues while I'm not working in a school.

@Elizabeth This is a difficult one! Perhaps it would be easier for most of us to talk about the behaviours we've observed in colleagues. I found that as a school librarian I had the opportunity to observe a wide range of behaviours among teaching staff. Because I was outside the teaching hierarchy I would often find myself on the receiving end of confidences from staff who were finding things difficult. I learned a lot from this informal aspect of the role.

I did enjoy this talk very much! I think it's always useful to look at human behaviour because interaction with people is really what our jobs are all about; if we do this well we can achieve much better results. Examining our own behaviours can help us to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again.

@Elizabeth I too have observed a lot of hedgehog behaviour among school librarians! I've also seen meercats and giraffes! As you say, it would be great to see more dolphin behaviour. I think the hedgehog behaviour might be a consequence of isolation and insecurity for many school librarians. Hopefully with more opportunities for connection and better recognition for the role, this behaviour will become less common.

I agree completely with you here, Elizabeth. I can think of a number of occasions when I reacted too quickly in situations involving pupil behaviour when I was a new school librarian! This kind of mistake can have long lasting consequences for the librarian's relationship with individual pupils and with whole classes. I learned that it's really important to understand the situation before reacting.

I was very interested in the techniques outlined in the podcast and have been looking at Mike's ebook, "Web literacy for student fact checkers" (https://webliteracy.pressbooks.com/front-matter/web-strategies-for-student-fact-checkers/) as a follow-up. It has lots of interesting examples and exercised to try out.

@Elizabeth Yes, we need to encourage them to use Wikipedia in a critical way, rather than ignore it. It can be a good starting point and a source of references to check out. I think Wikipedia is a great resource for teaching information literacy. It allows students to see the variation in quality of the articles and also the procedures in place to improve the resource. It has great potential to raise awareness of issues with information resources.