Why school libraries matter

Young Learners Need Librarians, Not Just Google, by Mark Moran

Many absolutely clueless administrators still believe that a search engine is an adequate substitute for a trained research teacher. With the nation's schools budget-strapped, librarians--and even libraries--are being cut from coast to coast. Even President Obama, whose creation of a National Information Literacy Awareness Month suggests he should know better, left additional funding for school libraries out of his FY 2011 budget proposal.

Saving the Google Students, by Sara Scribner

For the Google generation, closing school libraries could be disastrous. Not teaching kids how to sift through sources is like sending them into the world without knowing how to read.

Thanks to David Dillard for the links.

Every day in my reader it seems I hear of more layoffs in the schools or library closures. School libraries impacted my life far more than inspiring me to go to library school. The women (sadly, there were no men in any of the positions where I attended), were driving forces behind literacy and research. Unlike many students who go to college, I knew how to use Books in Print and all sorts of other indices and sources before stepping into the university library. I was well-versed in card catalogues (the OPAC came a couple of years after I started).

Plus, school libraries were a lifeline for me. I didn't have ready access to a public library when I lived at Barksdale AFB--we lived seven miles from the main base out in a neighbourhood surrounded by woods with just a little convenient store. My parents wouldn't have taken the trouble to drive into Bossier City and take me to the library there. Fortunately, they didn't have to. In California, there was a Kern County Public Library on base, but the librarian wouldn't let me choose any books on the level I was reading (college, first year), because I was in 8th grade and they were 'too adult' for me. The school librarian, on the other hand, let me work there, helping her with all sorts of task. The librarian in Kansas, where I did have a good public library, nevertheless taught me to stick to your guns as she faced down a censorship ploy.

Sadly, I don't remember any of their names, but they were very good to me, and I remember them fondly. I still feel sympathy, for example, for the woman at the California school whose son--a student at the US Air Force Academy, died in an accident on the very motorcycle they gave him for his birthday.

'Without a librarian, a library is just a collection of books.' That's on the signature file of someone on the MEDLIB-L list. I don't know the attribution, but it's very true. Librarians make collections come alive. They keep them growing, make them useful, and spread the word of what's available. Tapping into the knowledge contained in a collection (whether actual or virtual) is the librarian's special gift. Guiding his or her patrons through the information maze is another.

If you are a parent, make sure you tell administrators how important the librarians and the library are at your school. If you are an administrator, think twice before making cuts that leave students floundering. Libraries are much easier to maintain than rebuild, and much less expensive. There seems to be a thing that happens where cutbacks are made in lean times, and then later, in the good times, organisations find that it's not so easy getting back what was lost.

Our children deserve to have the tools they need to compete in the world after leaving the relative safety of school. Librarians provide some of the best tools ever, because it's not about facts and figures--it's about how to learn, how to reason, how to think critically, and how to apply this to everyday life, that matters. But you still need to know where to go, how to go about it, and what to do when you find it, and that, too, falls under the perview of the school librarian.