School. library development in Portuga - A fairytale or hard work? The Portuguese way!l

João Paulo Proença
jp.proenca@gmail.com
Zagreb – October 2017
School library development in
Portugal: A fairytale or hard
work?
The Portuguese way.

30/10/2017 2
Before starting…
Who am I?

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Who am I?
An Inter municipal Coordinator of
school libraries and an ex-Teacher
librarian
A teacher at…

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Before starting…
Where I come from

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Where I come from

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30/10/2017 6ESCO
L
A
BÁSICA INTE
G
R
ADA

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ESCO
L
A
BÁSICA INTE
G
R
ADA
14 km of sandy beaches

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Who am I ?
One of the reasons for being invited to work in the
Portuguese School Library Net, in 2006 ,was the
success of the Grandslam project.
I was a teacher librarian of the school at the time,
but, unfortunately…

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This wasn’t the school library of the
school…

1st Stage: From 1996-2006
Portuguese School Libraries
Network Programme:
Milestones of a long journey

S.L.N.P. was launched in 1996. Its purpose was to
install school libraries in schools of all levels of
teaching, conceived as multimedia resource centres
offering users what is necessary to read, to have
access, to use and to produce information, regardless
the format or media for leisure purposes, and to
promote reading and information skills.
School Libraries Network Programme:

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Background (20 years ago):
A population without habits of using libraries or other
cultural equipments.
 Weak reading habits.
The Public Library Network is only ten years old (at the time).

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This Program is co-ordinated by the
School Libraries Network Office in
articulation with other services of the
Ministry of Education and with local
authorities, in particular through the
Public Library, allowing a strong co-
operation among administration, public
libraries (School libraries Support
Services Of Public Libraries) and
schools. They all work together
implementing policies to respect the
principles and functioning rules
established.

Services offered by the SLNP:
In training literacy programs (reading,
information, technological...);
Help and consulting in organisation and
management;
supporting documents in all areas
concerning school libraries;
dissemination of best practices;
discussion list;
School Libraries Network Blog;
catalogues network.
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Services offered by the SLNP:
Catalogues networking: Creating an
union catalogue by municipality, with
global research through our website;
Creating an interface in the website
with access to all individual catalogues
of the schools.
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School Libraries should be regarded
as platforms with a wide range of
resources, which can be used and
explored by the school community.
Each School Library is managed by a
team, coordinated by a teacher-
librarian, who promotes a
collaborative program in a strict
collaboration with classroom
activities and also provides individual
support to students.

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To assure these functions, the library must develop a diversified
set of strategies, of which these are examples:
----
Organization of the users’ training activities, disseminating the
ways the School Library is organized and how the different
resources and services can be explored;
Directing students in research tasks and schoolwork
preparation;
Response to the teachers’ and students’ information needs;

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To assure these functions, the library must develop a diversified
set of strategies, of which these are examples:
----
Cooperation with the teaching staff in order to integrate the
use of resources and the information skills training in the
teaching practices;
Make available innovative production and online didactical
and informative contents, sites assessment and selection, list of
pointers, construction of digital libraries, access to libraries
Production of didactical material and study aids, (research
guides and tutorials for the production of school works, ...)

2nd Stage: From 2006-2016
Network Programme:

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National Reading Plan
Launched in 2006 to improve reading skills and reading habits.
It is a response to the concerns of the levels of literacy of the
Portuguese population;
The target audience; in the first phase the priority are
children (Pre-School Education and children who attend
Basic Education) especially during the first six years of
school;
 NRP and SLNP work together;
school libraries have an important role: to place the book at
the centre of the school activity; preparing innovative
projects; cooperating with all teachers.
Milestones of a long journey - II

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Programmes to encourage and to promote reading:
in school contexts
- classrooms
- school libraries
in the context of public libraries and other community spaces
in the family/leisure time context
in unconventional reading contexts
Experimental projects for the promotion of reading

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In School context:
Support all activities concerning NRP
e.g.
National Reading Contest
National Reading Week
Teachers activities supported by SL and T L
Books technical treatment

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The Human resources:
To support the Program development, the School Libraries Network
has a group of teachers who are trained and have experience in the
management of school libraries. These teachers known as inter-
municipal coordinators (Swallows) provide
consultancy and technical support in the field, starting in the library
installation stage. Later on these teachers go to schools and connect
with Public Libraries services, and promote regular working meetings
with public librarians, teacher librarians and other staff for training
and collaboration issues

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In schools, human resources and specially the
teacher librarian play a key role in
promoting policies in conjunction with school
boards, head of departments, students,
parents and educators in general. Besides, the
teacher librarian must develop a library
program with the community, with relevant
activities to train others to use skills in
information and digital literacy and reading all
formats.

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In July 2009 the state enacted a law that made the existence
of one or more teacher librarians at full time (into a maximum of
3) compulsory in order to support the school libraries of each
school or of a cluster of schools according to some criteria:
he or she must be a teacher, with specialized training in
school libraries/reading/ICT ...
According to the number of students of a cluster of schools

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The teacher librarian must be an information specialist,
skilled in the emerging issues brought up by
technologies development like digital environments. He
or she must be prepared to offer new and innovative
services to the school community and be a proactive
leader in developing partnership with state and private
institutions.

Training the staff (a vision)
Since 2006/07:
•E-learning courses to trainers.
•Continuous Training Plan for School Libraries
National Priority ( as in 2008 for teachers and technical staff)
•Special focus on specialized training for Teacher-Librarians
(He/she must attend 25 hours of trainning every year (E-learning
or face to face ), in many different subjects)

School Libraries Network Program: The issue of the
quality - a Self Evaluation model
In order to help the school libraries to make a difference
and achieve effectiveness and assisting them in
measuring impact and performance, the introduction
of a School Library Self-Evaluation Model in 2008
was the necessary answer to provide school libraries
with a tool that would help them move forward by
continuously seeking improvement.
So, this way, the evaluation model seeks to assess the
quality and effectiveness of the school library, not
the teacher librarians or the libraries' staff.

School Libraries Network Program: The issue of the
quality - a Self Evaluation model
The model covers four key themes or domains, divided in
sub-domains: A. Supporting Curriculum
Development; B. Promoting Reading and
Literacy; C. Projects, Partnerships, Open-ended
and Community-oriented Activities; D. School
Library Management. Each domain/sub-domain is
subdivided into indicators that address nuclear
aspects of its effective functioning. For each indicator
the model provides potential evidence collection
instruments, which will support evaluation. Taking
evidence is a fundamental part of the self evaluation
process

20 years after: what have we
achieved?
Network Programme:

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20 years after.
I - There are around
2400 school libraries
integrated in the SLNP,
which means a very
good coverage of the
territory
There are around 1300
Teacher librarians

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20 years after.
I - Since 2011, there have been considerably fewer
integrations, due to two factors: the financial crisis and the
fact that the number of schools lacking a school library is
already rather low.

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20 years after.
II - Diffusion
Creating documents and tools for the dissemination of
information, communication, exchange of experiences
and ideas, has been another area of this program. The
SLNP offers a range of services through its Web
page, blog, mailing list, social networks
(Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) e-learning platform and
individual school library catalogs. There has also been
the development of municipal (school and public)
libraries networks, with their own webpages and
collective catalogs.

SLNP(School Library Network Program)
MINISTRY OF EDUCATION/CULTURE
Regional
Administration
Public Libraries
Municipalities
SABE (School Libraries
Support Service of PL)
Programmes…
A network built in partnership
Institutions (funding and
training)
Regional collaborators
Training Centers of School
Associations
More partnerhips here

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20 years after.
Forum 20 Years SLNP (RBE) - 14th October
2016

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20 years after.
A movie

20 years after: Which are
the new challenges?
Network Programme:

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Challenges:
1 - To assess and improve the quality of the work of
school libraries  analysis of the results of school
library evaluation model.  Valuable ideas
application.
2 – The effective implementation of another
structuring document “Learning with the school
library” (2012) . It answered the need of establishing
a set of standards in the areas of reading, media and
information literacy to guide the work of the school
libraries in collaboration with the curriculum.
New challenges

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Challenges:
3 – Doing the “state of the art” of the implementation of the
document: “Strategic Framework: 2014-2020.” This
document defines a set of scenarios and action lines that
describe the vision and global policy of the Programme for
the future.
4 – Redesign the school libraries in order to be prepared for
the digital challenge (the Google era, the use of iPads and
tablets, the ebooks, ,, The multiliteracies,…, new reading
ways .)
New challenges

Skills on
literacy
What we know is less important than our capacity to continue to learn
more (Siemens 2006)
New challenges

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Challenges:
5 – To not forget the
advocacy. Nothing is
secure and definitive.
6 – Being always
creative: new era  new
answers .
New challenges

30/10/2017
Thank you
João Paulo Proença
• skype: jp.proenca
• http://www.facebook.com/joaopproenca
• http://bibticaprendizagem.blogspot.com
• jp.proenca@gmail.com

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