Budgeting - yet another role of the Teacher Librarian

Another aspect of Teacher Librarianship that I gave little thought to was budgeting. Again, I am forced to look at the ever increasing roles of the Teacher Librarian and wonder how do they fit it all this stuff in???!!! How will I fit all this in? After many deep breaths, I started reading...

The Debowski (2001) chapter was long but extremely informative and helped me sort out the different facets of budgeting that a TL has to deal with in my own mind. Through the article many goals arose:
* build a funding base so financial support is easily achieved
* ensure that your collection reflects the needs of the users
* be visibly accountable by publishing outcomes
* hand in a budget submission every year
* maintain a record of the costs associated with providing
electronic services
* evaluate your collection using collection mapping to
identify needs and areas that are lacking.

Lamb and Johnson (2007) identified 3 roles of the TL as a good budget manager:
1) Collaborator - collaborate with members of the school community to secure and allocate money for the budget.
2) Steward - a leader who seeks input from others; bases choices on needs of the community; can account for all spending; implement and assess results and communicate these results to the community.
3) Thinker - search for ways to gain additional funding but also make the most of what you have.

The thing I related to most though was in the Marge Cox (2008) article when she stated, "Put on your own oxygen mask first". In her article she says this as a reminder that the TL should include items in the budget that will keep you up-to-date with what is going on in your profession. I read this and saw myself, hyperventilating on my first day as a TL ..... so many roles for one person.

Copyright

Very interesting reading of the copyright laws for schools and TAFE's. If you want to read more see: www.smartcopying.edu.au

Some of the more interesting things I found were:
* In Australia there is automatic protection of copyright.
* Schools can use DVD's and videos for non-educational purposes; eg. rainy days and on bus trips (if the school provides the movie) ONLY if schools have a Co-curricular licence. If the school does not have this license, permission must be gained from the movie's distributor to play the movie.
* Schools should not borrow DVD's from students or parents as they could be pirated. There are serious penalties for playing pirated movies in schools.
* The Teacher Librarian should not have to police copyrighting issues at the school - each teacher should be aware of the rules and the penalties involved if copyright is breached. (This involves website and internet copyright as well as print materials, electronic materials, dvd's etc.)

Creative commons:
Schools are able to use creative commons resources free of charge. This includes music, film clips and photos. A list of creative commons symbols can be found on the smartcopying website. This will help teachers identify resources that are protected under the creative commons licence.