Marketing TL's

It seems that in many school districts across BC, TL's are being sidelined by any random body that can read to children or help them exchanged books. In many cases I've witnessed, this body belongs to the Vice Principal as they are easy to pull from the library when needed for administration issues, to cover the Principal when s/he leaves the school or whatever other job the VP has in their seemingly 'catch-all' job description. This needs to change if TL's want their position to stay alive and they only way for that to happen is if they begin to market themselves and become known for what they can do to support their schools.
TL's can support not only the students, but also the teachers. If the teachers don't know what the TL is able to do, then teachers certainly aren't going to ask for their help. Working in collaboration with classroom teachers to team teach units so the teacher has only half the unit to prep, teach and mark seems like a real plus from my point of view. Why don't more teachers take advantage of this? Perhaps they don't know it can happen.
TL's can take leadership roles with professional development committees. They can lead a ProD tech day that will show teachers how to set up wikis or blogs to use with their classroom, or show the teachers what wikis or blogs the TL already has online that can be useful in the classroom from the teacher's perspective.
In some instances, staff are willing to eat lunch in a workshop environment and this is where TL's can display their wares, so to speak. A 40 minute workshop is more than enough time to show one Web 2.0 tool. A good example is creating a wiki with websites related to a specific theme or subject unit that would help teachers access more up-to-date information to make their student's learning more meaningful. Most teachers I know would listen and watch, take down the address to the wiki and sign on at another time, like in the evening, to take advantage of the new information . . . if only they knew!
With lots of self advocating, taking a leadership role among the staff, bending the ear of Admin and informing staff about studies that prove student learning increases more in schools with full time TL's compared to those without, is a good beginning to keep the position of the teacher librarian from disappearing from our schools.