With no librarians, books sit behind closed doors.
By: Erin Fitzgerald, Canadian Gazette
While the public school board wrestles with how to make school libraries functional for the digital age, many across the board sit locked up tight.
Ross Button fears his daughter will complete her high school education without having open access to the school library.
Button serves as co-chair of the Carleton Place High School council. He has a daughter in Grade 10 at the school. He also has children attending Beckwith Public School.
He says it is “absolutely unacceptable” that students don’t have unfettered access to their school libraries.
Ian Carswell, associate director of the Upper Canada District School Board, says the CPHS library is available for teachers to bring their classes to on scheduled visits, but is not open otherwise. Almonte and District High School’s library is slightly more accessible. It is open Tuesdays, Thursdays, alternate Fridays and teachers are able to bring their classes for a scheduled visit.
“The idea of a librarian being present all day, every day is behind us in terms of staffing resources,” Carswell says.
“You have to ask whether you want a teacher to stand in the library all day or stand in the classroom and teach.”
He says teacher-librarians are in scarce quantity.
The board says its challenge is to make school libraries relevant in this technological era.
“We are all wrestling with how we make 21st century libraries for 21st century learners,” Carswell says.
Button realizes today’s students are the Wikipedia and Google generation, but he says this type of research needs to be supplemented by borrowing from the old school approach of taking a book off a shelf.
He says his eldest daughter used to try spending her free time in the library, but found the door locked for the most part.
Beckwith students rely on parent volunteers to keep the libraries organized, but these volunteers cannot play a supervisory role so time spent in the library is minimal, Button says.
The severity of the problem is not lost on the school board. On Dec. 2, more than 50 community representatives gathered to discuss the issue. Teachers, mayors, counsellors, librarians and students all gathered at a roundtable discussion entitled, The Books, Blogs and Tweets Forum.
Delegates say they want greater access to online resources and new technology.
The board plans to analyze input from the forum to improve the way libraries work in the board.
Despite what the library of the future may look like, the problem of dark, locked libraries remains.
Local trustee Patti Lennox says student access to libraries is a problem across the board.
However, she is remaining hopeful that students will soon see positive changes in their libraries.
“We have everyone working together and we know what the students are looking for and what they need,” she says.
Button is looking forward to a solution, but is not overly optimistic.
“There’s something wrong in the system. The Ministry of Education says literacy is important and they send money to keep the library staffed, but there is no mandatory requirement for schools to use the funding for what it’s for,” he said.
NEXT STEP
Closed libraries are cheating high school students of their ability to learn proper research skills and universities are noticing this.
University of Ottawa librarian Valerie Critchley says when first-year students walk through the library doors they are often overwhelmed by the amount of information around them.
“Most students coming into first year haven’t dealt with research libraries regardless of their high school access,” she says.
However Critchley says there is a link between a student’s ability to evaluate resources who has spent time in a school library and the student who has little to no experience.
“Knowing what to do with all the resources and how to evaluate and use critical decision making (can be learned in high school),” she says.
On the other hand, Critchley knows school librarians are a vanishing breed.
“I would love to see every school have a proper library with proper library staff,” she says.
Although this is not the case, Critchley says there are opportunities to pick up important research skills in university or college.
“How many times have you heard someone say, ‘you can find it on Google,’”she says.
“It’s true, but we want to help you.”
From: YourAlmonte
Glad to see you pick up on the story. The library is now OPEN. Students wrote letters. People talked. School Board + Principle acted.
ReplyDeleteFor now.....