According to Wallace & Husid (2011, p. 1), “School librarians educate, teach, collaborate, lead, and promote information and media literacies with the goal of preparing students for the twenty-first century.” Leadership and advocacy is an essential element of ensuring that this complex role is valued. Todd (2001) rightly asserts that the only ones who can save teacher-librarians is themselves. Advocacy and the demonstration of value through leadership is the surest way to halt and reverse the decline of teacher librarianship. Hay notes that one way to approach this is to ensure that the teacher librarian become ‘a teacher of teachers, as well as students’ (2000, p.7) by offering professional development opportunities and contributing to the skill development of their colleagues. Curriculum expertise and a deep understanding of the site’s organisational structure will therefore be used to plan opportunities for collaboration, seek out willing and innovative teachers and become involved in committees and meetings. To this end, recommendations in each of the areas outlined in this portfolio included opportunities to collaborate with both teachers and the executive.

In an attempt to begin this process, several leadership projects were undertaken during the initial placement. These included an inchoateproject to create guides for teachers which could initiate opportunities for collaboration and assist the library in rebranding as a digital space appropriate for 21st century learners. The guides were highly relevant to the digital upskilling necessarily during COVID-19 remote learning and used technology relevant to the site. The artefacts were shared internally and are intended to become part of the digital offerings of the OPAC once it is live. The first is a video describing the process of giving feedback to students on the Learning Place and the second is a PDF explaining how to screencast videos from PowerPoint. Both of these were made using existing functions of PowerPoint which are easily available and familiar to both staff and students. Finally there is a Wakelet demonstrating the potential of Wakelet as a teaching tool. Creating these tools was a valuable process in itself and provided the opportunity to test potential ICT options before presenting them to staff. For example, feedback from a hearing impaired colleague allowed me to improve the inclusivity of my video guides by prioritising written over verbal information. Furthermore, although Wakelet proved to be simple, attractive and versatile, it is not accessible in Education Queensland devices and therefore would only be useful for exporting as static PDF infographics, a function already provided through a Department wide subscription to Adobe Spark. Personally, it has been a useful learning process and I also have received overwhelmingly positive responses from staff, including requests for additional guides, which provides valuable opportunities for advocacy and discussion regarding the role and value of a teacher librarian.