This article in the Times Higher paper highlights a worrying trend in our schools, a movement towards digital information as the only information available in schools. Google replaces librarians and their dewey decimal system and website replace books and newspapers as the source of all knowledge.
I know I'm not the only person who loves books, many people do, and like most people my love of books and reading comes from plenty of exposure to books and libraries when I was young. By getting rid of libraries we risk marginalising books as sources of information and pleasure for a whole generation of children!
If we take a moment to think of schools purely as places where we prepare young people for the worlds of work and higher education (which I don't, but just for arguments sake) there is still a case to be made for libraries. Using a library teaches you to sift through a mass of information to find what's relevant. You have to do this on the internet too. When writing essays for university I frequently had my allowance of ten books out at any one time, and often had to do triage or photocopying to get the information I needed. I also copied or took notes from multiple print journals which were unavailable online, despite the fact that literally thousands of journals are. If I'd only used online sources I doubt I would have passed. By getting rid of libraries and information skills we risk narrowing the skill set of state pupils and putting up another barrier between them and the elite universities.
I always took great pride in announcing during tours of campus that our library housed 'over a million' books. This was something to be proud of, and often visitors were more interested in this than the computer suite right next door. My university is a very young one, but great, top 5 or six in the country every year, because it prides itself on links with business and constantly keeps itself up to date, yet it values the library, staffs it with subject specialist librarians and has just spent money redeveloping it and modernising it. Yes, there are more computers in the library than I would like, but the books are still there.
4 comments:
Our library is now a "study centre" aka hang out for kids to mess aorund on computers. We don't buy many books, but that's because we can't really afford them. It makes me weep!
This is a dire shame!
I think that the internet is indeed a great way to access information, it’s easy and quick.
But nothing can take away the pleasure of reading a book. Having something tactile to hold and smell (I love the way old books smell)
I also agree with you that having Library is an important tool for us to learn how to find information, I remember the same thing, borrowing heaps of books and spending hours rifling through them to find the sections you need and then photocopying them. I look back rather fondly on this. It did indeed train me to pick out information, pay attention to detail and improved my reading skills.
It seems to me that your objections are from a personal pleasure gained from using libraries and books. While I totally agree with you on these points, in school you have to look at the educational value of what you are doing.
You say that using a library teaches the skills required to search the Internet, I say why not use the Internet to do that? Do you teach Latin so that students have the skills needed to learn French and Italian?
Libraries and books are great but I fear that unless they are relevant to the lives of the next generations there will be less of them in our schools and maybe, worse still, in our towns too.
Russell! I love that people are still reading this blog, especially, since I've moved it to wordpress, but I can't agree with you, books are an important source of knowledge AND pleasure. I don't see why the two should be separate. I don't have a problem with the internet, 'computer rooms' and 'resources centres' I just have a problem with them taking over space that should belong to books. I think there's plenty of room in life, and in education, for both. x
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