SCHOOL LIBRARIES

A school library is such a special space.  If the library had been underused perhaps it was not being run in the best way.  Children may read outside of school, but there again they may not, and those who do not get the book bug because of lack of opportunity are all the poorer for it.  The positives are huge, obviously improved literacy skills, in the sharing and discussion of books pupils develop opinions and independence and valuing the act of reading is something that stays for life.  The library ought to be the heart of a school, not pushed to the dusty corners.

I don't think you do need a massive library in a school. With the internet, you can do all the research you need to online. My memories of school libraries are shelves and shelves of dated books. Then a small literature area. In the 21st century why can't schools move forward? Every school has a computer room for research. I think in each class a row of literature books would be best. You really think in 100 years we're going to continue publishing in paper medium? The desire to hang on to these dated libraries are based on nostalgic views rather that practical ideas. When we have holodecks for learning, we'll be saying we should go back to computer rooms with vast numbers of computers. 

I'm not anti libraries, but at school there's more options. A public library is different as it is important for community and those who do not have the net. 

And let's face it, everything you need to know can be found on Wikipedia :)

Reading is the most important skill a child can pick up. Well, apart from being able to hide their winegums and eat one when nobody's watching. We didn't have  a library in my primary school. We did have a library in our secondary school, which nobody used. Books were my first love. And most folk will be able to work out how badly that turned out. What matters isn't school libraries but making children aware of the joy of reading. That may sound contradictory, but this is the way the world works. Start with a deficit and add to it. So, if for example, you have a community centre, or school library, the authorities have decided to close - less resources are allocated. The community centre no longer does lunches for pensioners or youth-club discos. The library no longer buys the most-have Harry Potter books, or the contemporary equivalent. Children are no longer required to take one, two or three books a week from the school library and asked to write about one of them by their teacher. The authorities say the community centre is closing because people no longer use it and the numbers are dwindling. Money would best be spent elsewhere. Children don't use the school library because they don't have to, but when they want to the resource is no longer there. We're all middle-class now so when a child wants a book mummy or daddy will just buy it from Amazon. The cost has been been taken off the balance sheet and the bill and the responsibility of teaching children about the value of books is presently directly to the parents.       

I do not recall my primary school having a library but my daughter's did.It is a council school with a mixed intake, some homeowners and some birds of passage because it is near the centre of a seaside town. She enjoyed taking on the responsibility of being a library prefect in year 6. According to her teacher it gave her the opportunity to communicate her love of books to other children who then became more motivated. Admittedly her taste at the time was for Jacqueline Wilson which I found a bit tedious, very much the same predictability of style structure and vocabulary as Enid Blyton but with a more grungy setting, but junior readers often like to tell a book by the author and cover and to know what they are getting in advance and she was a good little reading ambassador. She is now a first year student of English Studies.

Parents and grandparents without money can buy children's books in charity shops and they do if the price is right, I used to work in one, but it is not the same. There is not the formal acknowledgement of books being key to learning. Some youngsters do miss out, it is not always the poorest families who have no books in the house.
 

I think the world has waged a war on paper, using eco problems as the reason, but there's also a nasty whiff of authoritarian skullduggery going on with books at the moment; the prison service banning them from prisoners, anti-competition in a time of austerity, library services cosying up to suppliers, indie booksellers getting squeezed out (only 1% of books is bought from an independent bookshop in the UK), Amazon pushing Kindle and driving down prices, overall antipathy towards the physical copy.

Amazon push kindle for a very good reason. Books delivered electronically cost next to nothing. Literally, put a 0 in place and grab a point mark eg 0.----0002. The rest is profit. Amazon would like all its books to be delivered electronically for that reason. Makes good business sense. And good business sense is increasingly, as your school library debate shows, the only thing that matters. 

I agree that a qualified staff member would ensure a library was properly utilised for kid's research projects. Libraries are underused when uncoordinated. Schools look to cut back there first as the electronic book rubbish is seeping into brains and leaving holes in grey matter. Saying that and clearly without longitudinal evidence and totally shooting from my stubborn hip .... I'd argue vehemently that a school library improves academic achievement when used appropriately.  It isn't solely the parents job to teach library skills. Kids can get any digital book they want online - assuming they are privileged enough to have parents that encourage them to do that online rather than shooting baddies - but picture books are not the same on a Kindle, ipad or PC. Many kids in a severely deprived area of Notts don't know what an index, page numbers, chapters etc are because there isn't a library with paper books within a 5 mile radius to see what a book function is beyond the big book Walker school sets.

The school still does phonics based curriculum activities daily and a library is key to that cognitive learning process assimilating. If school has a computer suite of ten laptops booked up for numeracy or literacy based activities most days, surfing for literature at school isn't very accessible in NC rushed timescales. A library is a place for an internal interaction, for browsing, planning, associative thought patterns happen when the books are already there for kids to see, touch, open and trigger creation. Library research and provision should be on the curriculum from an early age not obliterated for more LCD space. Uni outcomes would be dire with just online academic journals and Amazon purchases, core library books form the building blocks. You always have to do a lit review at uni, like it or not. Don't punish the little folk. Tell them to stick their Murdoch business plans firmly up their jacksies.

I work in a library and while adult lending is dire owing to illiterate managers who stock whatever bestsellers are cascading that week in golden showers from their suppliers, cookery books and glossy memoirs with titles such as Jamie's Cheeky little Crumble, The Road Less Gravelled : garden designs for wild children, We Need To Talk About Devon -- a definitive guide to bonking older men in teashops -- the children's library is booming. Loads of children are tramping up the stairs and drawing on the tables in big felt tips.

The key is enthusiastic staff, events, homework clubs, people dressed up as mythic monsters, adults reading stuff out loud, grown men playing Hawkwind on electric guitars, imaginative displays. storycraft, parties, classics like E Nesbit, The Princess and The Goblin, The Phantom Tollbooth. But enthusiastic staff are in short supply. They stripped librarians of their titles and specialisms so they could send them down the pay scale, made everyone a customer service assistant and then employed every fuckwit in town  who'd been standing in the pond in the local park while pigeons pecked their bare arse because of their inclusion policy.  Brilliant!