Today's library
must be a blend of online resources and books
The library has always been the heart of a good school. It will
remain so if librarians learn to adapt and realign their space to the new
learning environment. It is heartening to see that many librarians have already
reinvented themselves in various ways to suit the needs of our tech-driven
times. Earlier, school librarians would join work after having attended a
course in librarianship and mastered the Dewey system of cataloguing. They
would then settle down to the business of issuing books and supervising their
return. From time to time, they would be asked for specific information or
requested to locate books relevant to a particular topic. Libraries were meant
to be silent spaces; even whispering was frowned upon. In some of these
old-fashioned libraries, there would be gifted librarians who were able to
instil a love of reading in children.
Currently, in a spacious library, there is a mix of ‘silent’,
‘social’ and ‘study’ zones. The silent zones are meant for individual reading,
the study zones are for small groups who study together while the social zones
are for discussions, book readings and library talks. The modern librarian is a
tech-savvy expert who is able to navigate the digital landscape to locate
relevant information for users. She is expected to be a research guide and to
be knowledgeable about different websites as well as printed books and
journals. A good librarian soon makes herself indispensable to the entire
school. She becomes the ‘go-to’ person for information, or advice with
assignments, projects or lessons. Apart from being a rich resource centre, the
library also serves as a haven for disturbed children, for the slow as well as
the precocious reader and, not the least, for frazzled teachers.
It is a fallacy to think that the library has dwindled in
importance in the digital age. In fact, exciting opportunities have opened up
in the way information is shared, and electronic media and printed books,
magazines and papers make an interesting and attractive blend in the modern
school library. But if we look upon the library as just a repository of static
information and books to borrow from, children will not be attracted to it at
all. They will find it far more convenient to read from their Kindles or look
for information on their smartphones. The library should be the hub of lively
discussions, book readings, talks and so on.
In early
November this year, there was a librarians’ meet organized by a reputed
publishing house in collaboration with a bookstore. I was invited to hold an
interactive session with over a hundred librarians who were attending the meet.
The theme of my presentation that evening was ‘The Library as the Nerve Centre
of the School’. Some of the participants said that they had no real say in the
choice of books in the library. Expectedly, most of them remained discreetly
silent on the issue of the negative aspects of their work. I emphasized the
tremendous value of the librarian to any school. Yet I realize that librarians
as a rule are not as valued as the teaching faculty.
Some librarians complain that they do not get the freedom to stock
up the library and run it the way they would like to. Others feel that their
work is routine and mechanical. The reason for this, though, could also be the
librarian’s lack of initiative. When I needed to appoint a librarian for my
school, I was quite surprised that I just couldn’t find one who was fond of
reading. In my opinion, it is far more important for a school librarian to be
able to instil a love of books in children than to spend her time indexing and
cataloguing. This can’t happen if the librarian doesn’t read herself.
A prickly point that came up in the course of my interactive
session with the librarians was the matter of censorship. I know that different
schools have different policies regarding this. In some schools, books are
categorized age-wise or Class-wise — the flip side is that advanced readers
feel restricted and deprived as do senior students who love reading children’s
books. Indeed, titles like Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, or the
Bengali nonsense rhymes, Abol Tabol, by Sukumar Ray are certainly not
age-related. In the end, we concluded that some screening was perhaps necessary
for small children. For instance, we certainly didn’t want them to read the Annual
Sex Survey published in graphic detail by a national magazine.
It is unfortunate that school authorities these days feel that
funds should be allotted to tablets and computers rather than printed books.
What is the point of buying books, they declare, when children don’t read these
days and thousands of titles can be stored in a single tablet? But imagine how
soul-killing it would be for children to enter a library and sit in front of a
screen and ‘search’ for engaging titles. There would be no colourful books on
the shelves, no pages to turn or illustrations to look at and no browsing to
engage in. It is no wonder that a futuristic cartoon left a chilling feeling
inside me. It had a man looking up from his laptop to remark, “Apparently, Amazon
is putting a bunch of books into a big building so that people can look at them
before buying.” No matter how much you read on the screen, one of the few
simple joys left in life is being able to spend time browsing in a library or
bookstore. A good school library will have a happy blend of online resources
and books. And, of course, a great librarian.
Source | https://www.telegraphindia.com
Regards
Mr.
Pralhad Jadhav
Master of
Library & Information Science (NET Qualified)
Senior
Manager @ Knowledge Repository
Khaitan
& Co
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