Barbara Band has spent decades advocating for school libraries. In her book, Championing Your School Library: A Practical Guide to Advocacy, Marketing, and Promotion, she offers guidance on how to better advocate for, market, and promote school libraries.
In this interview, she shares why “being valued is not the same as demonstrating value”—and what school librarians can do to change the conversation. I believe this is a very important sentiment, and I hope it encourages you to read her work.
My full interview with her is below.
Please introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Barbara Band. I am a chartered librarian with about 30 years of experience working in busy school libraries across a variety of sectors. For the last nine years, I’ve worked as a freelance consultant. I absolutely love my job.
As a freelancer, I provide schools with advice on setting up new libraries or revitalizing neglected ones. I also perform stock audits, make book recommendations, conduct training, and, of course, I write. I wear many different hats.
Briefly summarize your book, Championing Your School Library.
It is a practical, strategy-based guide designed to help school librarians advocate for, market, and promote their library services and resources.
I drew on both library and business principles. Before becoming a librarian, my first degree was in business, and I worked in project management. I brought that knowledge into this book because many people don’t realize how much techniques like marketing, promotion, and SWOT analyses apply to the library world.
The book is aimed at both new and experienced school librarians. While the title is Championing Your School Library, the strategies are applicable to any librarian—whether you are in a public, law, or business library. I used real-world case studies from school libraries to show librarians how to put these insights into practice, which is an area many struggle with. They agree with the concepts but don’t always know what steps to take in their specific situation.
Why did you decide to write this book?
It feels like I’ve been advocating for school libraries for years. Back in 2012, I organized a mass lobby where librarians, authors, and students marched on Parliament to meet with MPs. That led to a report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Libraries (APPG), which was the first report looking at the state of school libraries in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. This eventually led to the “Great School Libraries” campaign.
I’ve spent my career telling librarians they need to advocate and demonstrate their value, and I wanted to put all that advice into a book. Many librarians promote their resources and think that is advocacy. While promotion is a part of it, true advocacy starts with building relationships and collaborations with stakeholders.
If you stay inside the four walls of your library and don’t engage with the rest of the school, people won’t know what you do. School libraries in the UK are not statutory—a school does not legally have to have one. We are constantly competing for budgets and priority. If we don’t bang our own drum, nobody is going to do it for us.
What changes are occurring in education that make it important for librarians to champion their libraries?
It is an exciting time in the UK. There is a recent pledge for all primary schools to have a library by 2029, and 2026 has been designated the “National Year of Reading.” Recent research shows a rapid decrease in children reading for pleasure, and the government has realized that if literacy levels stay low, there will be a long-term economic and social impact.
The government has also announced funding for secondary school libraries to buy “reading for pleasure” resources. Additionally, we’ve had a curriculum review that introduced requirements for financial literacy, media and digital literacy, environmental literacy, and oracy skills.
These are all massive opportunities for school librarians, but we must be proactive. We need to look at these additions to the curriculum and ask, “How can we get involved?”
For example, a librarian could start a debating club to support oracy or have students make video book reviews. If we aren’t proactive, a teacher will fill that gap, and we will be left behind again.
What are two things you hope all readers take away?
First, being valued is not the same as demonstrating value. I’ve heard many MPs and headteachers say they “recognize the importance” of libraries, but because libraries aren’t statutory or measured by inspections, they aren’t prioritized in the budget. You have to change the conversation.
Think about what matters to your stakeholders—senior leaders want different data than parents or students—and measure what you do to demonstrate the impact on their specific needs. You must think about measurement before you start a project, not just at the end.
Second, sometimes you have to let things go. As librarians, we often want the shelves to be perfectly tidy and the cataloging to be done immediately. While a tidy library is nice, your top priority must be actions that result in a measurable impact. If you have a favorite book group that you’ve run for years but attendance is dropping, you need to let it go and use that time for something more effective.
Is there anything else you would like to share?
This final point is aimed at school leaders: Please use your librarian! I see so many schools setting up reading initiatives or literacy groups without including their librarian. They are wasting the expertise and knowledge that person has.
It can be a “Catch-22”—if the librarian doesn’t promote themselves, they are forgotten by the senior management team when it comes to initiatives regarding digital literacy, well-being, or revision. Don’t waste that person’s experience. Use your school librarian.
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