The Demise of School Libraries - School Libraries Undervalued

During my brief time as a middle school teacher, I made it a point to take my students to the library as often as I was allowed. What my students experienced there was a combination of digital literacy instruction and physical book searching. Time was limited, and I was actively discouraged by senior faculty and administration from actually making use of this “allowed time” (once per month) to take my students to the library, suggestions that were at odds with district and administrative claims that such skills were the goals of their curriculum.

Image from SLJ article "Who Needs the MLS? In a Fast-Changing Field, Librarians Consider the Investment" 

My students enjoyed the break from class, and most of them were eager to browse the shelves for new books and play the educational Kahoot games that followed the library media technician’s digital literacy and digital citizenship presentations. As their teacher, I know from watching (and meticulously tracking) my students’ progress that these library visits, as brief and informal as they seem when compared to the “rigors” of curriculum oriented TEST PREP, had a profound impact on their reading ability over the course of the year. Visits to the school library encouraged them to read, removing the sterile “classroom” distaste that many students associated with reading, and the visits enabled them to find books that interested them. In general, visiting the library made reading an exploratory, social, FUN thing.

I sincerely believe that, for my students, there were no downsides to these visits. They did not miss anything critical from the district-approved-and-mandated curriculum. Their performance on state mandated tests did not suffer as a result of reading more and widely. Their habits of information consumption did not worsen as a result of participation in individual and group digital literacy activities that were directly connected to their personal and classroom reading preferences. Indeed, studies have shown that “librarians are uniquely qualified to teach the information literacy skills that are paramount in a knowledge-based economy” (Francis 5), and I preferred my students to practice as much development in these areas as they could get.

The resources that my students enjoyed were made available by a single library media technician—not a highly paid, master’s-degree-minted librarian, not a credentialed teacher, not a certificated instructional technology specialist—a library media technician who had only recently even graduated from Palomar College’s LIT program AFTER she had already gotten this job. In no way is this meant as any criticism of her, or of the role of library media technicians in comparison to degreed librarians, although that same study mentioned above shows that when schools employ qualified librarians, there is a “higher likelihood that students will do well on standardized tests (Francis 4). My point is that the role of the school librarian is watered down, misunderstood, and underused, and this has been going on for decades.

Image from 2019 Chicago City school teachers strike

Since at least the nineties, when technology was gaining a footing in schools whose districts could afford it, responsibility for maintaining and implementing the use of that technology for school instruction has been apportioned in ways that made librarians’ roles unclear (Johnston 24). While some schools hired information specialists to take on this role, others have increasingly merged such responsibilities with those of the school librarian. Adding responsibility while withholding authority, compensation, and opportunity to provide services (as in my own school) demonstrates a gross administrative injustice to a profession that is dedicated to offering precisely what districts claim to want and teachers need assistance to provide: wider, improved readership (higher test scores, anyone?), greater access to technology and responsible use of that technology in an era when fake news and mass media consumption are inextricably intertwined, and perhaps above all: a safe, educational space designed for students to spend their time in—particularly those who have nowhere else to go after school hours release them back into communities where they may or may not have responsible care-givers waiting for them at home.

Illustration from the 2019 ALA State of American Libraries Report on School Libraries

School libraries need attention, resources, and respect. They need funding and authority to match these qualities. School librarians should be held to high standards, but as they so often meet these standards already, they should be given the time and tools they need to be able to provide their services to students as effectively as possible. Until we see more administrators, teachers, and parents collectively support their school librarians with more than lip-service sentiment, school libraries will remain largely underappreciated potential, untapped services that should be harnessed to change lives.

Works Cited

Francis, Briana, and Keith Lance. “The Impact of Library Media Specialists on Students and How It Is Valued by Administrators and Teachers: Findings from the Latest Studies in Colorado and Idaho.” TechTrends: Linking Research & Practice to Improve Learning, vol. 55, no. 4, July 2011, pp. 63–70. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s11528-011-0513-9.

Johnston, Melissa. “Blurred Lines: The School Librarian and the Instructional Technology Specialist.” TechTrends: Linking Research & Practice to Improve Learning, vol. 59, no. 3, May 2015, pp. 17–26. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1007/s11528-015-0849-7.

Kaaland, Christie. “Creating a Climate of Voracious Readers: The Impact of Major School Library Funding.” Teacher Librarian, vol. 45, no. 1, Oct. 2017, pp. 26–29. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lxh&AN=126080402&site=ehost-live&scope=site.