Sowing the Seeds to Grow Library Leaders

In 2021, the Oklahoma School Librarians (OKSL) won the ABC-CLIO Leadership Grant. The OKSL division of the Oklahoma Library Association has always been a small division, but as budget shortfalls and teacher shortages ramped up in the early 2010s, as the author states, they reached a crisis point. According to the author, they were losing school librarians in Oklahoma at an alarming rate. The author states they worked together to present free workshops across the state for school librarians. OKSL was still struggling to recruit leadership but now had built a network of current school librarians who were taking part in the workshops and conference sessions. Partnering with the University of Oklahoma School of Library and Information Studies (OUSLIS), the author sent a survey of needs of both recent graduates and current school librarians that centered on the six shared foundations. The author has made huge strides with some of their objectives. OUSLIS and OKSL have developed a strong relationship with the University College of Education, and have an amazing group of school librarians who present to preservice teachers each year on what school librarians do.