Performing the school librarian: Using the Butlerian concept of performativity in the analysis of school librarian identities

Librarianship, role, identity

The LIS literature addresses librarianship, the role, identity, work, vocation and profession of a librarian, often with the research librarian in focus (cf. Samek, 2007; Wilson, 1984: 199). At conferences and in networks the role and identity of the school librarian are frequently addressed although the scholarly literature on the subject is scarce (Lindberg, 2015: 38). The concepts of role and identity sometimes overlap each other in the literature; the concept of identity being used in an everyday sense and as a synonym for role or vocation (Lindberg, 2015: 38). According to Lindberg, although research on professions and practitioners of different fields has been carried out in LIS (e.g. Sundin, 2003) and the different professional identities of librarians have been examined and categorized in some works (e.g. Moring and Hedman, 2006; Sundin, 2003), there are only a few scholarly studies of the library profession (Lindberg, 2015: 38). Previous research on the role of the librarian has taken both the perspective of the educators (e.g. Limberg and Folkesson, 2006) and the perspective of the users (Sundin et al., 2008).

School librarians and collaboration

School library research and school library practice can be said to exist in two separate spheres, the LIS-research and the research written by or for practitioners (Gärdén, 2013) or professionals (Bewick and Corrall, 2010). Professional librarians refer, for example, to scholars such as Kuhlthau and Todd. In investigating the benefits of school library programmes, they concluded that nearly every student viewed the school librarian as someone who helped them in their learning (Todd and Kuhlthau, 2005). In later studies, there is an emphasis on evidence-based practices in school libraries (Todd, 2015). Studies of the ways in which school library media programmes affect academic achievement show that, when planning and collaboration occur between school librarians and teachers, student learning is positively influenced (Lance, 2002, 2010). In a study of school library media programmes over the past 60 years it was concluded that these led to increased student achievement and had positive effects on learning and cognition (Lonsdale, 2003). A key factor in increased student achievement in this study proved to be the availability of the librarians when it came to collaborating with teachers (Lonsdale, 2003). The four key roles of a school librarian have been identified: ‘teacher, instructional partner, information specialist, and program administrator – emphasizing the vision of the school library media specialist as instructional partner’ (Cooper and Bray, 2011: 48). It has previously been argued that despite teachers’ knowledge of the value of the school library, they typically do not form working partnerships with librarians (Canter et al., 2011). In her study of highly collaborative teachers and librarians, Montiel-Overall (2008) identified the essential elements of successful collaboration as school culture, the positive attitudes of collaborators, communication, management and motivation. Others have suggested collaboration and co-teaching as school improvement strategies (Loertscher and Koechlin, 2015).

Performing identity

Performativity deals with how identity is embodied and enacted; i.e. performed. According to Butler performative identity is not something that the individual has but something s/he does. Understanding identity from a performative perspective entails that identity is understood as changeable. Identity is not a stable category or place but is constantly created and repeated through a ‘stylized repetition of acts’ (Butler, 1990: 179). This means that the identity does not consist of a solid core but is constructed through repeated actions. Identity is seen as performative because it is created by particular actions that in turn rely on repetitions and miming of the possible, intelligible and desirable. The activity of performing an identity should not be understood as an intentional activity, we do not choose our identities; they are instead produced as we repeat our actions. Furthermore, identity is an effect of discursive practices (Butler, 1990: 24).

Recognizability

Inspired by the Butlerian concept of recognizability I aim to explore how school librarians express their pursuit for recognition through work and communication with teachers. Recognition happens through communication in which the subject is changed by the power that lies in communicative practices (Butler, 2004: 140). In expressing their aims the participants use expressions such as to be noticed, seen, visible, acknowledged and remembered. Butler states that ‘the very possibility of subject formation depends upon a passionate pursuit of recognition’ (1997: 113). She uses words such as pursuit, longing and desire, stating that we always desire recognition and that ‘the individual always has a longing for recognition’ (2006: 17). The librarians in this study, on the other hand, use expressions such as strive, struggle or fight. Consequently the word pursuit is used in the paper in relation to recognizability.

Intelligibility

In order to examine different understandings of being a school librarian this paper draws upon conceptual ideas of on how intelligibilities or cultural understandings are shaped (see Butler, 1990: 22–24). Specifically, the focus lies on trying to make sense of the intelligibilities that the participants express in relation to the teachers. Butler (1997: 11) states that ‘individuals are said to acquire their intelligibility by becoming subjects’ and it is through this intelligibility that they become recognizable and can perform their identities. The concept is used in interpreting the librarians’ expressions related to how they are being understood, and how they explain what they do as they make sense of their work in relation to teachers.

Building on the theoretical concepts presented above, the following research questions guide the analysis:

Introducing school librarians of best practice libraries

Initial pilot studies revealed that despite the progressive Swedish legislation, it was not easy to identify well-functioning school libraries. Instead, several sites visited in the exploratory phase suffered from poor staffing situations or lack of strategic agendas. Although it is interesting to investigate performativity of professional identities in such contexts, I decided to develop a strategy for identifying well-functioning school libraries and focus my investigation on these. Consequently I selected school libraries which had earned awards from the Swedish librarian union. In these settings it was assumed, and confirmed, that one or several school librarians performed ordinary or ‘normal’, yet at the same time outstanding, i.e. award-winning, best practice work. The 10 successful school libraries presented in this paper have in common that they were assessed to have librarians who inspire reading among students, provide tools for source evaluation, teach students to navigate in the flow of information and handle their digital identities. The selection was limited to separate school libraries and did not include libraries combined with public libraries (a common organizational solution in Sweden). Upper-secondary and secondary schools were chosen rather than primary schools, and public schools rather than private schools. This resulted in a selection of 10 schools in six municipalities in the south of Sweden. The librarians contacted were all interested in the study, which was framed as a study of the school librarian’s professional role and identity, and consequently 14 interviews were conducted at the participants’ work places during April to June 2015. Experience in librarianship ranged from two years to over 20 years. Of the 14 participants, four were male. The semi-structured interviews lasted for 40 to 90 minutes; they were recorded and transcribed verbatim and the participants were offered the chance to read the transcriptions. In the following analysis, each theme is illustrated and each participant is represented through quotations from the interview material. The data material has been treated with confidentiality and thus fictional names have been given to the respondents.

Performing identity: To create a space in a place

There are no obvious ways of being or doing the school librarian, instead librarian identity has to be constituted in relation to school leaders, teachers, competencies, personality, interests and the conditions of the local setting. It takes both a professional education and/or an employment for others to see you as the librarian, and for you to express that you are a librarian. In this sense, the creation of the librarian is a communicative and social process, as well as a performative process. As a school librarian it is possible to create several identities. These identities are performative in making something happen; in making the school librarian into someone (whether it is someone s/he aims to be or not).

From a performativity perspective, identity is constituted through both doings and sayings, i.e. actions, language, concepts and ideas. The identity of the librarian is created in a specific institutional setting such as a secondary or upper-secondary school regulated by curricula and norms, and the performances take place within these conditions. Butler (1994: 33) makes the distinction between performativity and performance by stating that ‘while the latter presumes a subject, the former contests the very notion of the subject’. Gregson and Rose (2000: 434) define performativity as being the ‘citational practices which reproduce and/or subvert discourse and which enable and discipline subjects and their performances’. Performativity is not just, or the same as, performance (e.g. Goffman, 1956), because in the latter there is an actor following, or choosing not to follow, a script. In life, for better or worse, there is no script, and thus performative actions and utterances cannot be seen as intentional.

Expressing: ‘I am a school librarian’

To be convincing in their identity the school librarians have to act in a way that convinces others. One way of doing this, is to use utterances which tell other people that you uphold the position; to express that you are the librarian of the school because ‘by saying something, a certain effect follows’ (Butler, 1997: 3). Hence, the librarians in this study testified to spending a lot of time positioning themselves by citations verbally as the librarians of the school, i.e. ‘I am a school librarian …’ ‘As the school librarian …’ or ‘We librarians …’. These performative speech acts cannot be said to be true or false but rather to be successful or not. For the speech act to be seen as successful it has to be performed by the right person in the right context (see Butler, 1990). Since these utterances fulfil the criteria of successful speech acts, they help the librarians in convincing others to see them as librarians. Such performative utterances also occurred in the interviews and worked to further distinguish the role of the librarian from the role of the researcher.

Among the librarians, there were those who questioned the use of the word ‘librarian’ or hesitated to label themselves as librarians. Instead other labels and identifications arose, such as ‘study coach’, ‘counsellor’, teacher or educator:

It’s almost as if I don’t want to call myself a librarian any longer. Because we’ve become study coaches. (Casey)

A sort of guide, coach, driver, pedagogue … A fake teacher, or whatever you might call it. (Eddie)

I think there’s a greater acceptance among teachers that we have a teaching role. (Jordan)

Even though using a label other than librarian, this is a performative utterance and creates an identity at the school. Labelling is thereby a way for the librarians to constitute their identity. Furthermore, the use of other labels, such as study coach, could in the Butlerian sense of performativity be understood as having constitutive effects, creating the librarian as someone new in contingency with the new labels. For example, the librarian who identifies as school librarian might perform identity in ways different to the librarian who identifies as study coach or educator. S/he might also try to gain recognition and acquire intelligibility in other ways. The identity of the school librarian is thus constituted through the actions in the available discourses of the school setting, the identity being an effect of a performance that is constituted in and through language (cf. Cover, 2013).

In summary, a challenge for librarians when performing identity through the ways in which they express themselves is to use successful utterances and different labels in order to constitute their identities.

Positioning oneself

It can be argued that being employed as a librarian is performative in itself; by acquiring the position of a librarian you become one. But the performativity of the position alone is not enough. Being the librarian in a school can be described as a position in the middle, or in between, the school leaders, the teachers and the students. What s/he makes of that position, the actions, constitute who the librarian becomes in the school, and how identity is constituted. To be convincing, the librarians have to create their identity in relation to other subjects in the social setting, in this case the teachers. Some of the librarians claim that they are part of the teaching staff, positioning themselves together with the teachers, while others emphasize the in-between role or position themselves closer to the students:

It’s the students we work for and the teachers we work with in order to be able to work for the students. (Marion)

Furthermore, the participants positioned themselves as people who love to be around, to work close to and talk to young people, sometimes sharing the same interests. Librarianship in general is about working with and for people (cf. Cooper and Bray, 2011: 50) and school librarians often find their work very rewarding or find an ‘immense satisfaction achieved from the job itself’ (Kenney, 2009; Walker and Calvert, 2015: 6). The librarians in this study express it much in the same way:

It’s like social work too, being an adult in a school … and, as well, I’m so childish that it’s easy for me to connect with the kids too. Some of them are my pals, I like them. (Darcy)

As shown above, the librarians can perform several identities in their positions as school librarians. The librarians frequently stressed the importance of being ‘the adult, among young people, who is not a teacher’. This ‘other’ adult does not grade the students, and consequently should be easier for students to communicate with. One of the librarians even talked about the library as ‘a life resource’ for the students.

Furthermore, as individuals, the librarians maintain that they are, or try to be, open minded, fun loving, tolerant, outgoing, social and with a good sense of humour. From a Butlerian view of identity we, as humans, strive toward being intelligible and legitimate subjects and this endeavour makes us mime and simulate an ideal figuration of the librarian as friendly, outgoing and sociable (see Butler, 1990: 22–24). Friendliness towards teachers helps the librarians to maximize the possibility of collaboration. This builds on a conviction that the most successful school librarian is the one who collaborates with teachers as acknowledged partners in teaching. In the interviews the expression of the library being ‘for everyone’ is constantly repeated and underlined. In accordance with this view, the librarian performs identity, on the one hand, as someone who does not grade or in other ways judge, and, on the other hand, as a sensible adult role model guarding the library and its users. Again, this is an example of when the librarian finds herself in a position in between the teachers, the school leaders, the students and, in the interviews, the researcher. In the Butlerian understanding, no matter what kind of librarian the participants aim at being or what their ideal identity looks like, these identities are always shaped and reshaped by utterances, actions and relations to others in the social setting of their workplace and thus constituted through both language and actions (see Butler, 1990).

A strategy to get in on the teaching and into the classroom is to establish a good relationship with the teachers. Consequently, despite sometimes experiencing a lack of respect from the teachers, the librarian feels the necessity not to jeopardize this relationship. They are also reluctant to turn down an invitation from a teacher:

If you want to get anywhere you absolutely have to collaborate. That makes it hard to say no. Even if you’re totally weighed down by work, you don’t want to say no to someone who actually asks, that contact is so precious, ‘what if I don’t get the chance again?’ (Alex)

This quote introduces yet another dimension; that of not being able to have the privilege of saying no, as networking is so fragile and important.

In summary, the challenge of performing the librarian’s identity consists of trying to position themselves in relation to teachers, students and through utterances of their personality. Reiterative utterances of being certain kinds of people working in particular kinds of libraries were used in order to create distinct places and spaces in the school.

Recognition: To be visible and remembered

Butler (1997: 113) states that ‘the very possibility of subject formation depends upon a passionate pursuit of recognition’. And a passionate pursuit it is, though for the school librarians not only in the Butlerian sense. As I will show below, it is the pursuit to be seen and recognized that creates possibilities for librarians to do their work. This work takes place in the interplay and collaboration between the librarians and their colleagues at the school. When formulating their positions the librarians returned to issues of being visible, acknowledged and remembered and rendering library-related tasks as priority for the teachers. The school librarian is recognized through performative actions that change a little with every repetition in meeting different teachers and their expectations. Consequently performative acts affect recognition. Views of librarians together with the demands and expectations placed on them produce them as recognizable on some occasions and unrecognizable on others. Occasionally, the participants express being recognized together with being remembered. This is partly because the word recognized has two different and intertwined translations in Swedish and partly because recognition is a prerequisite for being remembered.

To be visible and acknowledged

Visibility is not a new issue in the school library area. The visibility of school librarians has been researched and includes a significant amount of practice-related research (cf. Ballard, 2008, Shaper and Streatfield, 2012).

When a new semester or a new budget year starts, the school librarian cannot, at least to some extent, be sure of the role s/he has in the school’s educational work. When the teachers have a heavy workload, the library is one of their last priorities. The librarians regard it as a challenge to render themselves visible in the school in order for the teachers to think about collaborating and to use the library services on offer. Visibility is commonly expressed as systematic and strategic work. Furthermore, the librarians talk about their need to be included in teacher planning, in order to gain access to the classroom or to get the class to come to the library as part of their work tasks. Planning is important for the projects to work well and for the librarian to be fully involved. Several of the librarians referred to this as something they have realized over the years when working in a school.

Consequently, the librarians make sure to be at every staff meeting, teacher group meeting, study day and parent meeting, trying to always be there, having something to say, being heard or simply visible. A common expression is to take just a few minutes to raise awareness, interest or curiosity without creating irritation or taking up other’s time:

Every Monday there’s a meeting. A staff meeting. Then we usually go and talk about something, about this sort of stuff. We try to say something at every Monday meeting just to show that we’re here. That’s what you have to do. Stand up and shout. (Noel)

Working with visibility had several advantages for teachers, students and librarians. Some of the librarians stated that becoming visible was treated positively by colleagues, partly because it entailed offering help and support. Visibility in terms of working together with a teacher was also found to increase librarians’ visibility to other teachers. However, this strategy of reaching ‘all’ teachers varied among the librarians in the study. Some found it unequal or unfair not to try to work with every teacher in order to reach every student, while others were satisfied with reaching one single teacher as long as the projects were successful and visibility increased.

The teaching role of the school librarian is thus a form of doing, a constant activity, performed together with or for someone else. In the Butlerian sense there is no doer behind the deed, i.e. identity creation becomes an effect of practice, constituted through constant reiterative citations that are both discursively and materially performative (Butler, 1993: 12).

The participants highlighted the importance of, and thus the pursuit of, acknowledgement for the work that they do:

That everyone at the school is proud of the school library and on good grounds. (Gail)

Collisions could occur between the expectations of librarians and teachers, particularly on the subject of visits to the school library. For example, the librarians stressed that they needed to know in advance when a class of students were on their way to the library:

That’s not the way I want it. But the teachers think it’s really good. (Shannon)

Step 1: at least send me a mail, you don’t need to tell me a week in advance but at least 10 minutes before you ‘here we come, the whole class!’. If you can’t let us know a couple of days beforehand, at least just before you arrive, so we know. So we have time to log in, both of us. So we have time to prepare. (Lynn)

In these instances, the librarians express frustration over lack of acknowledgement or, as some of them expressed it, respect. This need for forewarning is explained as having to do with the limits of the librarian’s work, workload or service ambitions. Sometimes, although remembered in the sense that the teacher chooses to use the library and its services, the librarians express meeting a lack of respect or that their services are taken for granted. Other utterances reveal the conviction that the library is regarded as a service function with no agenda of its own:

We don’t have an agenda. The school agenda is our agenda. (Taylor)

The practice of performing the school librarian identity in meetings and conversations with other professions is in line with the constant repetitions of utterances in the pursuit for recognition.

In summary, ways of attaining visibility and gaining acknowledgement for their work were important tasks for the librarians when pursuing recognition. In addition to the problem of colliding expectations between teachers and librarians, the view of the library as a service institution, or not, was repeatedly stated.

To be remembered

The participants in this study emphasized repeatedly utterances such as ‘this is what I do’, ‘come to me and I will help’, ‘I can contribute’. These utterances become self-fulfilling in constituting the school librarian identity and work as a reminder to the teachers of the librarians’ presence. In the words of Butler (1990: 33), ‘identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results’. These constantly repeated expressions for reminding purposes contribute to constituting the librarian as someone who is not being remembered in their own eyes. Thus, being forgotten is the result of the performative acts of the teachers (forgetting) supported by the librarians constructions of themselves (as someone being forgotten) and strengthened by their performative acts (of constant reminding).

For some of the librarians, becoming acknowledged as one of the staff members of the school is not sufficient in order to start a working collaboration with the teachers. They take up the challenge of consistently having to remind others about their presence at the school, their competence and services. Without exception, all of the participants gave expression to constantly reclaiming their space in order to reach out with information or to be considered when starting new projects. This was declared to be a very important task and was reiterated over and over again with words such as nagging, chewing on or ‘wearing people down’. These types of utterances illustrate that the librarians see themselves as constantly repeating what they work with and why. This becomes part of the process of positioning themselves in the school. In time, the surroundings get used to the librarian showing up, claiming space and being heard, sometimes through a bit of shouting or pushing. In this process, which can be a working lifetime or a few years, the position and identity of the librarian are constituted in an active process of performativity:

If you’re new to it, or if you’re building up a library or take over from someone else, then you have to do it [remind] I think, because the library becomes who you are. I’d say that a library is not even half of what it could be without a librarian. Shouting and calling, it’s needed, you know. (Fran)

In summary, all of the librarians pursue recognition in the same way, namely by constantly reminding, nagging and repeating information in order to be remembered by the teachers and to get the message of desired collaboration across.

Intelligibility: Becoming understood

Butler (2004:31) claims that ‘to persist in one’s own being is only possible on the condition that we are engaged in receiving and offering recognition’. If the individual is not recognizable s/he cannot persist in the own being and therefore s/he needs some form of intelligibility for subjecthood and recognition to be possible. The participants in this study are understood to have intelligibility. As stated above, at meetings with staff or parents, the school librarians try to explain their work. Through a theoretical lens this could be said to be a normative act of marginalization that has to do with the relationship between the organization and the practice. Marginalization is related to the issue of being understood in one’s professional identity. The challenge consists of getting others to understand why the work of a school librarian is important, and how it can contribute to fulfilling educational goals. This leads librarians not only to remind about but also to explain and promote the library and its services, including the competence of the librarian. This is addressed in the following two sections.

To inform

The desire for recognition produces performative acts that constitute the librarian as part of the teaching staff. In their aim to become recognizable and to take part in the teaching, the librarians use different strategies which they express both implicitly and explicitly. One strategy is to provide information on services at a time when the teachers are hard-pressed. Part of this strategy is to show that the librarians can contribute in a way that will ease the burdens for the teacher:

Sometimes we say to the teachers, this is a way to gain access too, ‘we can take care of that bit in your course too, we’ll take that part, you can leave that to us’. So we weave it in and present it exactly in connection to something they’re working with and that’s how we get in and do our stuff. (Brett)

To be able to inform about their services the librarians have to be granted access to the teachers; this usually occurs through school leaders. Access to the students comes through the teachers. Some librarians express this pursuit in terms of a struggle or fight.

Participants in a study of the transition from teacher to teacher librarian (Branch-Mueller and De Groot, 2016) identified promoting, advocating, connecting and building relationship as examples of important tasks. Usually, constant informing is productive, although on some occasions it was obvious to the librarians that the teachers were not interested or did not have time. Providing the teachers with information about their services was, according to the librarians, one of their most important and time-consuming challenges. As stated above, they referred to it as constant repetition. A strategy for getting listened to was to emphasize the possibility of easing the burden of teaching and making it more efficient (cf. Johnson, 2006). Their statements reveal efforts to inform and convince their colleagues of different ways that they can be of assistance. This is used as a strategy to get the teachers on their side (in a relationship that is mostly referred to as a fight) or to create an interest in their services.

We can be the ones that ease their work burden, not someone who demands their time or to get into the classroom in order to add more work. It’s about telling them that this will make things easier for you. (Lynn)

The above quotation refers to the librarian being part of a project, when s/he teaches in the classroom or in the library or when the teachers send students to the library during classroom time. In these instances, the librarians see themselves as helping the teacher out and contributing to educational goals.

My connection is to be here in order to facilitate. For students and teachers and to help students reach the educational goals. That’s my connection. (Lynn)

Sometimes this aim was expressed as being something they had in common with other professions working at the school. At other times, the librarians pointed out that the teachers did not know or understand that the librarians saw a common goal for the two professions. The librarians emphasized that in order to reach out they have to adjust ways of informing to suit the teachers and the teaching, for example by being of assistance in other areas. Promoting services is thus part of the ongoing process of subjectivation, of making-sense of oneself as a librarian in relation to educational tasks and goals.

In summary, the strategies used to gain intelligibility by informing include trying to get access to teachers and students, creating an interest in librarian competence while often experiencing a lack of interest from the teachers. This is dealt with through utterances concerning easing the burden of the teachers, contributing in reaching educational goals and in other ways of being of assistance.

Explaining what they do

A newly employed librarian cannot take for granted that the teachers are fully aware of what kind of tasks s/he can fulfil, even though the position of school librarian is attributed. As a consequence s/he has to struggle with the ideas others have of the functions of a library:

All the notions that people tend to have about libraries, even though they don’t use them. (Marion)

We have worked hard on not being regarded as administrative staff. Sometimes you fight against windmills and sometimes you succeed. But we’re not one of the teachers. (Kim)

The librarians highlighted the need that their work be understood by the teachers, and expressed trying to bridge the gap in understanding between them. Since the sharing of information can lead to greater understanding between the different professional groups, being given the opportunity to work in the classroom or to be part of a project also gives them the opportunity to show their work and competences:

So that the students are used to us dropping in now and again. It’s fun as well to see what we’ve helped them with, how it turned out in the end. It helps us too, to be clearer. (Casey)

Here the librarian states that being part of school library work fulfils several objectives. It helps the teachers, s/he provides a specific competence; s/he helps the students. And it also demonstrates a specific competence to teachers and students, thus clarifying the identity.

One way of using successful performative utterances is to learn the discourse of the teachers, ‘to talk the talk’. A former teacher now employed as librarian states it as very helpful when trying to be intelligible to both professions.

In the school world it helps greatly to tell them that I used to be a teacher. In the library world you try to tone it down and make out that you’ve read courses that involved libraries. (Alex)

In summary, the strategies used to express and acquire intelligibility include efforts to explain what a librarian does through the available discourses and demonstrating competencies in order to bridge the experienced discrepancies in the understanding of the different professional roles.

The challenge of performing school librarian identity

Performing an identity as librarian involves creating a space for oneself, and a place for the library in the school. Positioning as librarian was one of the strategies in the struggle to claim space. The librarians performed identity by using utterances such as ‘I am the school librarian’, thereby labelling themselves. Discussion with school librarians about their challenges ‘will inevitably include problems with teacher collaboration – it does not happen often enough, and the collaboration that does take place many times does not approach a level where the school library media specialist would be considered an ‘indispensable member of the instructional team’ (Cooper and Bray, 2011: 48). The issue of collaboration between librarians and teachers is well known in the school library literature and the importance of the teaching role of librarians is widely acknowledged (Bewick and Corrall, 2010). Over time, the librarians in this study have grown closer to the teachers, partly because of increasing teaching tasks, which has made it more common to be regarded as part of the teaching team. Using the label of teacher was both a way to position themselves and a strategy for further collaboration with teachers. Notably, to perform in line with familiar identities in relation to the other professional group is a challenge for both librarians and teachers working in collaboration (cf. Zembylas, 2003).

Other possible identity positions to perform included those of people working closely with, and enjoying working closely with, young people, and as people who are service minded, friendly and non-judgmental. Here, dedication to service and the view of service as a core value in the professional identity of a librarian, emerge (cf. Hicks, 2016). Likewise, the participants employed at school libraries in Walker and Calvert’s study (2015: 5) mention the desire to ‘work with people’, liking to work with teenagers and appreciating young adult literature as factors attracting them to school librarianship and giving them satisfaction. When their participants were asked about what influenced them to be school librarians, a desire to have ‘a job with a purpose’ was mentioned (Walker and Calvert, 2015: 5).

Pursuing recognizability as school librarian

Though increased closeness to the teachers and a growing identification as a teacher, the problem with collaboration between the professions is still a most important issue. To be visible and acknowledged requires teachers to remember them when planning. In line with previous research stating that librarians’ relationships to the work they do ‘is significant for their professional identity’ (Huvila et al., 2013: 200), the participants in this study highlighted the importance of acknowledgement for their work. As Cooper and Bray (2011: 49) argue, it is common for both teachers and school leaders to be ‘unclear about the roles of the school library media specialist, and the potential positive impact on the instructional program and, ultimately, upon student achievement, of a fully-functioning library media program’.

Visibility as an effect of the librarian working with a particular teacher can awaken the interest of others. According to Cooper and Bray (2011: 48), ‘well-planned instructional projects, collaboration with teachers’ are the best ways for librarians to demonstrate the importance of their work, or ‘that their work is a vital part of the academic life of their schools’. This study shows that although the librarians in best practice school libraries have become visible in their schools, they still struggle with visibility. The invisibility of the school librarian could be expressed as embedded in the structures of the school system, in the walls of the school or perhaps as characterizing the profession. A study of the visibility of school librarians in their own context, such as the one this paper reports, is also a way to create visibility and thereby acknowledgement of the professional identity of school librarians.

Strategies for expressing and acquiring intelligibility as school librarian

In order to gain the necessary respect, librarians have to be understood as valuable assets for the school. This is performed by promoting the library, creating an understanding around the work of the school librarian through reiterative citations, constant reminding, explaining and struggling for recognition of their contribution to reaching educational goals. This time-consuming challenge consists of getting teachers, school leaders (and students) to understand the competence and contributions of professional librarian work (cf. Togia et al., 2015). Lack of awareness of librarian competence may have to do with the ways in which schools are defined by classroom teaching and learning, with teachers at the centre, while librarians, on the other hand, are seen more as having a support or service role. The professionals working in schools enact these norms and it is through their activities that the librarians can perform and constitute themselves. Not all the school librarians would call it a constant struggle. However, they acknowledged that they are used to struggling for the access that their fellow school librarians at other schools enjoyed. In previous research it has been stated that it is the responsibility of the librarians working in school to create an understanding of their work. Lance (2010: 82) for example writes that ‘teacher-librarians are ultimately responsible for whether or not their educator colleagues understand and embrace the role of teacher-librarian’. The developments of these best practice school libraries have, in the utterances of their librarians, a clear connection to the visibility of the librarian and acknowledgment of their work. The conclusion could be drawn that although these best practice school librarians have found strategies to meet the challenges of performing their identities, pursuing recognizability and acquiring intelligibility, the tasks of the school librarian are still more or less the same as those they had before being best practice school libraries .

The development of best practice school libraries

The three themes concerning how the school librarians perform their identities presented above can also be expressed as six tasks; namely to express, to position, to make visible, to remind, to inform and to explain. These tasks represent actions the librarians must or can undertake in order to be successful in their work, i.e. award-winning although they in some cases are privileged school libraries.

It is commonly stated in the empirical material that a shift has occurred in enlightening teachers from unknowing and uninterested to relative awareness of, and an awakening interest for school librarian issues and competencies. Consequently, the aim to bridge the gap in understanding between them is partly fulfilled. Furthermore, it is apparent that more experienced librarians were used to working on the image of the librarian. On the one hand, they repeatedly recounted stories of teachers who were unaware of the purpose of a school library. On the other hand, when asked for examples concerning communication with teachers, or understandings of their work, they were often positive in their responses. The developments and success of the librarian are underlined in the narratives by positive outcomes. ‘When I started here it was not like this’ they could say, or ‘Now it’s much better than is used to be’ or ‘I have really turned that around’. The production of the subjects and their identities can thus be seen as temporalized through the reiterative and citational practices of school librarians.

In conclusion, despite expressions of development and success, the work tasks of the librarian are similar to those described in previous research. This means first of all a constant expression and positioning as school librarian in order to constitute the identity. Secondly, even though the development of these best practice schools has placed the library in the centre of the school, the librarian still has to work at staying visible and remembered. Thirdly, informing about and explaining the competence of the librarian remains an important task regardless of success.

Implications for further research

Since the label ‘librarian’ is constituted through discursive processes of repetition, a new label could open up for new ways of viewing the school librarian. It is interesting to consider what this might entail for the individual librarian and for the position and identity of school librarians from the teachers’ point of view, as well as the consequences it could have for the professionalization and development of school librarianship as a profession. If the label of librarian is not used, can one still be considered a librarian? What impacts can the label school media specialist or school media manager have on the identity of the person working in that place and space? These are questions to explore further.

Implications for further research are also related to the tasks of school librarians in their collaboration with teachers. The tasks described in this study, which coincide with those in previous research, need to be carried out together with the new tasks generated by technical developments such as the digitalization of school work. While in research it is established that librarian-teacher collaboration contributes to student learning, it is both in research and in practice not altogether clear how to make this happen.

Furthermore, throughout the analysis of the transcripts it became visible how the librarians engaged in performative reconstructions of themselves during our conversations. Through this theoretical understanding of the librarians it is important to point out that even though using words such as strategies and pursuits I do not view the performative identities as intended actions. They are created in specific cultural and social settings and in relation to the norms and rules regulating those practices. To study how social norms are negotiated when these interactions are being expressed can enhance the understanding of school library and information practices (cf. Johannisson and Sundin, 2007). As has been shown, there are various ways of performing the school librarian. Even though there is a normative way of acting, it does not require that everyone acts in certain ways, or that each person can completely embody a particular norm. It is normative, for instance, to be expected to identify as service-minded to the users of the library, but that does not entail that everyone is service-minded, or that service-minded librarians are more ‘normal’ than others. The norms of the school librarian are connected to the norms of the school as an everyday workplace for different people. In the school there are certain rules and norms guiding language and actions. It is in this area the school librarians perform the school librarian identity. By calling attention to the notion of performativity we can start to understand the challenges facing school librarians in gaining agency and empowerment and in relating to norms within and outside their institutional settings. This deepened understanding could lead to further development of the profession and improve the conditions for professionals working in school libraries as well as in other educational practices.