Responsibilities

So, what do you do all day?

That was the essence of what The Lilead Project team wanted to capture with a series of survey questions about supervisor roles and responsibilities. Survey respondents were asked to indicate how important certain tasks, such as collection development, training, hiring, budgeting, and advocating for programs, were in their position, and how much time they spent on these tasks. These questions produced quite a lot of data that the researchers will be sifting through over the next several months.

It was also important to separate roles from responsibilities, and the survey asked supervisors to indicate when if they were responsible for certain tasks or decisions, or whether they played an advisory role. The results showed that while supervisors provided professional development for their building-level librarians – 93 percent reported that this was their responsibility – only 12 percent were responsible for hiring, and 10 percent for evaluating school librarians.

Among the highlights:

• 93 percent of supervisors reported that they were responsible for providing professional development for their building-level librarians;
• 47 percent said they were responsible for providing technology support to staff;
• 24 percent were responsible for collection development;
• 12 percent were responsible for hiring school librarians;
• 10 percent were responsible for evaluating school librarians.

Next: Challenges