World Libraries
The idea of World Libraries-never even thought about it, I was so busy maintaining my library that I couldn’t think beyond the physical walls and my own mental wall. This is something to explore and to include on my library website. I’ve used the Internet Public library for myself, but never thought to make it accessible for students. Opened my eyes. I will definitely look at this and find some sites for students to visit.
I asked my group if they ever thought about something on a smaller scale, at the district level to be exact. As we turn to more digital materials, access to digital books would be a great way to start to move towards digital media. It was the vision of our previous district library person to move to this end and house the ebooks in Elibrary. The only problem was the accessibility and the records not being included at the school level. Students don’t want to do too many tasks to retrieve information or they will simply turn to Wikipedia. Access had to be simple. I asked for the collection to be distributed to all the libraries with the resources to be cataloged. It took many months to get it up and running. Our district was not doing the updates necessary to house ebooks in the various school collections. The IT department found out that the last update was not enough to get the ebooks into our collections. All updates were interrelated and were needed.
A couople of years ago I sat on a committee with TLs and librarians from public libraries in Richmond. The public libraries wanted to meet to discuss how they could provide programs for students. Most school librarians saw this as a plot to have the public librarians replace school libraries or teacher librarians. I didn’t feel this way, our collections are different, the mandate of the public libraries has a much broader focus and school libraries support the curriculum being taught. We are specialized and they are not. It has been a while, but the committee slowly faded because we as a group were not willing to find a collaborative model to share resources. I wonder what it would be like if we called on the public libraries to incorporate some of their author visits to our schools?
What I wanted to see was something more local and obtainable than having a “World library”. I didn’t think it was a wise choice for school libraries and public libraries to pay for the same databases and licenses. Nothing came about, but as budgets get tighter, it might be something to re-examine. We should be sharing resources, however we were told, and I can’t recall that our electronic link to our public library website was not to be used as an extension to our library. This is the exact opposite of the idea of World libraries!! By the same token it is funny that we use our computer labs (mine is attached to the library and students use the lab and or library to do their projects).
In a time of dwindling budgets, one would think it’d be more practical to work together and make the most of our resources. I’d love to teach close enough to a public library that I could take my students, and force them all to get public library cards. I firmly believe in the school having resources available IN THE SCHOOL, but as you mention, it makes no sense to pay for electronic resources twice. My high school has recently started paying for ebooks and audiobooks, which I’m actually against. They are free and available for our students from the public library. I believe it’s very important to reinforce the connections to public libraries as we can… I recently completed a survey on our students and found that their use of public libraries rapidly declined as they got older. Approximately half of our grade sixes visit the public library, yet less than a third of our eights.
How can we work together, work smarter? I don’t see it as a threat that could put us into extinction, but a way to keep stretching our budgets so that we can get that shiny new book as soon as it is available, rather than waiting for a paperback.
Hi Karen,
Thanks for your insightful post. I agree that we need to make good use of public libraries and teach students the value in them so when they graduate, even if they don’t go on to university, they will continue to use resources available from a library. I think a partnership between public librarians and TL is a great idea. Too bad it didn’t really get off the ground and teachers were so resistant to it. We should be sharing resources and ideas, not competing for jobs.
I think the idea of a district level sharing library is an important point. In my district, all the school library catalogs are connected and there is a sharing book program however, the students and teachers are not able to access this themselves. They must ask a librarian who can search other libraries for them. Then the student, teacher or librarian must go to other school to pick up the book or it can be sent by internal courier but that takes 3-4 days. If a student or teacher needs the resource immediately, this is not a very useful system. Ebooks and online materials would be easier to share and would give instant access. We don’t have a central district library for resources. I think this would make sense because as you pointed out, there would not be repetition of resources. However, the district needs to hire someone to look after a central library as well as provide space for it (if there are books) and with budget cuts especially in areas like the library, it is unlikely to happen unless there is advocacy from teachers like us!
It seems to me a no-brainer. There is plenty of information to house and organize! If public and school libraries collaborated, they could ensure there was a good mix of curriculum resources and public resources, but they could also collaborate on reading events, students could participate in public library events, public librarians could participate in student-led library events. This is a good example of where knowledge of linguistic cognitive domains could help smooth out the connections – addressing both public and school librarian concerns, while building on ideas for collaborative projects. Everything doesn’t have to happen all at once. One event, or one project at a time.