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| Hearsay: |
Do school libraries need books anymore? Hm. Let me think. Wouldn’t that room be better served as a media centre or shopping district? Maybe we could have the kids participate in product testing or snack item focus groups there? Or maybe let’s make it a giant model of a big box store and do dual training for a range retail consumption and service roles, from bargain hunting to price tag stickering and mopping protein spills in the toy aisle? How about we make it a crematorium for everything I hold dear? How about that, huh? ARE YOU PEOPLE TRYING TO KILL ME?!?!
Keeping traditional school libraries up to date is costly, with the constant need to acquire new books and to find space to store them. Yet for all that trouble, students roam the stacks less and less because they find it so much more efficient to work online. One school, Cushing Academy, made news last fall when it announced that it would give away most of its 20,000 books and transform its library into a digital center.
Do schools need to maintain traditional libraries? What are the educational consequences of having students read less on the printed page and more on the Web?
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February 12th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
Private schools love doing things like this. It’s not about providing a good education, it’s about snowing the parents with token demonstrations that those steep tuition fees are going to a school that’s ahead of the curve.
February 12th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
George, I feel your pain.
February 12th, 2010 at 4:46 pm
These schools are training the people being taught to believe they should rule the rest of us‽
February 14th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
I’m forty and going back to school as part of Second Career retraining, and one of the biggest shocks was seeing the changes in the college library (I studied Electronics at this same college back in 1993). The library is now wall-to-wall computer terminals, and at any given time you’ll see half the users doing homework while the other half are browsing Facebook or watching sports videos on YouTube, and most people are talking over each other regardless of the students who are doing actual work. There are a few study rooms where people can study or work on group projects, as well as a side room with eight computers where talking is not allowed — according to the sign on the door, this room was put in due to the demand for a quiet space to work on the computers. As for the book stacks out back, I think the only time anyone visits them is when the librarians do the orientation tours at the beginning of the school year. Given that most of the students there are taking technical/vocational courses and are not in any Liberal Arts programme, most of the reference books are probably out of date anyway, but I’m pretty sure it’s only a matter of time before even these remaining stacks are either walled off or put in storage to make room for more computers. A bit alarming and sad, but there you go.