School Libraries Get with the Times

(Originally titled “The New School Library”)

In this helpful Educational Leadership article, Minnesota media/technology director Doug Johnson asks whether school libraries are necessary when students have vast amounts of information at their fingertips via smartphones, tablets, and computers. Absolutely, says Johnson, if libraries repurpose themselves to serve three vital functions:

• A social-learning commons – The popularity of coffee shops, shopping malls, and teen centers demonstrates people’s desire to meet and learn in a physical environment. Libraries need to be a “high-touch environment in a high-touch world,” says Johnson, with comfortable seating, flexible furniture arrangements, and “attention to aesthetics in lighting and colors [that] make the library a place where students and staff want to be.” Libraries should be used for meetings, research, tutoring, and specialized student services. 

• Production and presentation – The library should be less a grocery store where people “get stuff” than a kitchen where people “make stuff,” says Johnson. Students should have access to computers with lots of memory, robust processing speed, and software for music and video production and photo-editing, as well as presentation formats like interactive whiteboards and audience response systems.

• Teaching spaces – “The library’s resources have changed,” he says, “but not its mission: teaching people to effectively access information to meet their needs. The emphasis has shifted from teaching learners how to find and organize information to teaching them how to evaluate and use information.” The librarian is key to teaching students these skills in large-group, small-group, and individual formats. 

“The New School Library” by Doug Johnson in Educational Leadership, October 2013 (Vol. 71, #2, p. 84-85), www.ascd.org; Johnson can be reached at doug0077@gmail.com. 

From the Marshall Memo #506