This paper is a qualitative study of six principals' reflections on hiring staff for their school libraries. In this study we investigate what has shaped their opinion about this topic, and their thoughts about the possible correlation between the students' results and staffing the library with educated librarians. Furthermore we study what competence they are seeking when hiring staff to work at the school library. Six semi structured interviews were performed, and the results were analyzed in relation to institutional theory. The results show that although financing is an important part of these decisions, so is the former experience of school librarians for each principal. They ask not only for librarian skills, such as information literacy, but also for pedagogical competence and a large knowledge in children's literature.