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Educators

Purpose and use of library

School library should not be just thought in terms of services it can provide. Its purpose should be visualized both in terms of services and as an agent of reinforcing quality education. School library can’t stand in isolation and concentrate only on issue-return of books. It is not a discreet entity but an active constituent of school education system.  Educators should work in tandem with school library. School library needs to be equally aware of curricular changes taking place. In this scenario educators should help library to identify the relevant reading materials for the children. Further library should make efforts for the acquisition of identified materials.

Now the role of library has undergone sea change. It is no longer mere service provider, but actively content generation.  In fact educators and libraries are together involved in creating contents for the children by sorting, compiling, editing, interpolating and extrapolating reading materials.

Educators and school library needs to meet the requirements of the Children with Special Needs (CWSN). The term CWSN is not only limited to the children with different ability but any sort of deprivation can lead a child to this category. Deprivation may be of any kind like, socio-cultural-economic, linguistics, physical due to different ability, etc. The non-book materials supported by audio-visual aids will help these children to understand different subject fields easily. Moreover, it will also be an additional help to other children. These materials can also be used by the educators as teaching aids.

The focus should not be only on curricular reading but, non-curricular reading should be equally encouraged. The pleasure reading should be encouraged as it helps not only in meeting the recreational need but also in understanding the real life situations. Apart from making children voracious and critical reader, school library can also be an agent of enthusing life skills. It can be a medium of bridging the gap between teachers and children. The group work in libraries can help develop team spirit and socializing skill in children. Making presentation in library, organizing books by student librarian on rotation basis, helping peer to read and understand, library project work, discussions etc. are library activities, which can help develop overall personality of children. This can only be done by the active involvement of school library, teachers and children. Thus the purpose of library is to make children a critical reader and help them construct knowledge.  They can ultimately use this knowledge in their daily life.

Role of teachers in the library

Teachers have multifarious role to play in the library. Their ultimate objective is to help children become critical reader and construct knowledge in this process. While doing these teachers also indirectly help children in developing life skills. There is no defined set of roles for teachers to play in the school library. In fact it is open ended and depends upon the creativity of teachers. Some of the major roles teachers can play in the school library are as under:

  • Help school library in identifying relevant reading materials for the children;
  • Give children library project work on different topics;
  • Encourage children to make presentation and actively participate in group discussions;
  • Facilitate story reading session, appreciation of books;
  • Help school library in identifying and catering needs of the CWSN;
  • Organize outdoor reading program under sun or in tree shades or on hills or near river or stream;
  • Pedagogical use of non-book library resources and multimedia aids;
  • Sorting information for children from library resources;

Help  maintain library functioning by assigning library work to children in teams like, involving a group of children in issue-return of books, placing books at its proper place on stacks, nominating a student librarian on rotation basis, etc.

This is not a comprehensive list. Many more roles of teachers can be added.

Research studies on libraries and reading

Study Materials

Frank Smith on Reading
Talk of Krishan Kumar (ICSL-2008)
Talk of Pratibha Karanth (ICSL-2008)
Talk of Carole Jenish (ICSL-2008)
Talk of Sadhna Saxena (ICSL-2008)
Experience Sharing of D. K. Shanaz in ICSL-2008
Extracts of different commision’s and committee’s report on school libraries
Janet Murray article

Approaches to Library  books use for different age group children

The children of primary classes should be motivated to read non-curricular books. They should be exposed to variety of books having short stories, poem, comics, jokes etc. Later at higher level children should also go through targeted curricular reading along with non-curricular reading. But any age bar should not be imposed on children. It is found that the children of higher classes are also tempted to read short stories supposed to be meant for primary classes. However,  it should be ensured that pleasure or recreational reading activities do not get snapped by the burden of curricular reading. Ultimately they will start reading one whole story book like novels. Children will get trained to use encyclopedia, almanac, dictionaries, thesaurus, biographies, travelogue, curricular books etc. Thus this process will orient them towards library functioning and use from school itself. They will have no problem in using big libraries like, public libraries, college libraries and university libraries.