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I received my Masters of Library Science degree 22 years ago. There are a lot of things I studied during my MLS program that I have forgotten. For example, I don't remember how the Library of Congress cataloging system works. That's probably because the only time in my life I actually had to know that was when I was taking my cataloging course.
But there was one piece of advice I received from an instructor in my school library program that was as useful as anything else I learned. The instructor, a longtime teacher librarian, told us, "The most important people in the school building are the secretaries and the custodians." At the time, I thought that was a strange piece of advice. After all, aren't the administrators the most important people?
As time passed though, and I embarked on my teaching career, I realized just how useful that advice had been. There were countless times when I needed furniture moved-or removed-or assistance in getting chairs anda podium set up for a program I was running. Or a lightbulb replaced, or someone to check into why the air conditioning wasn't working in the library. Not only was it helpful to have a good relationship with custodians for all those reasons, they also were a good source for what was going on elsewhere in the building.
As for the secretaries, I can't tell you how many times I had to ask one of them to track the status of an outstanding purchase order for me to find out why some urgently needed books or educational materials hadn't yet arrived. In my last few years of teaching, as substitute teacher shortages were getting worse, I had nearly daily conversations with the office secretary to come up with a plan on which periods I could host classes in the library for which there was no sub, working around my instructional schedule for the day. Even more importantly, the secretaries were usually the pathway to the administrators, most of whom sadly didn't regularly make their way to the library media center, meaning I had to go to them to advocate for my program and to deal with crises.
I soon realized that no matter whom I was interacting with,...