Parallel Universes
The library and reading communities need to move beyond turf issues
By Evan St. Lifer -- School Library Journal, 6/1/2004
Noodling with the remaining portion of my scrambled eggs, I suddenly felt myself being transported to another meeting in a galaxy far, far away. As I materialized, Star Trek–style, into my new environs, I immediately noticed how eerily similar it was to my previous destination. Same early-morning meeting. Same lumpy eggs, bordered by the same stiff strip of bacon. Yet this time I was listening to a librarian recount an encouraging tale about how she and her team had transformed poor, reluctant readers into students whose reading comprehension scores had soared. Hadn't I just heard the same story? I fumbled through my program, flipping it over to the front: "American Library Association Annual Conference 2004." Was I living a Twilight Zone episode?
It's troubling to witness the duality of the reading and library communities, with literacy being the neglected common ground on which few reading experts and librarians dare to tread collaboratively. My naïveté notwithstanding, it is hard to fathom that fear of invasion of turf has kept these parallel universes from joining forces more often. With their common goal of transforming children's lives by turning them into competent readers, turf issues come off as a flimsy excuse. Consider the Christian Science Monitor's recent article reflecting on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, lamenting that 60 percent of black fourth graders in this country cannot read.
The library community has shown its potential for implementing reading strategies and documenting their results, as evidenced by our School Library Journal/Thomson Gale Giant Step Award winners: Emma Elementary School in Asheville, NC, and the Williamsburg (VA) Regional Library, both of which have launched successful, innovative reading programs (see "Shaking Things Up" and "Picture Perfect," pp. 44–50). Also, see our May 2004 cover story, "The Search for Meaning: How You Can Boost Kids' Reading Comprehension ," about a Title I Baltimore County school that raised reading levels by turning around apathetic readers.
It's hard to imagine two groups that need each other as much as librarians and reading specialists. Their needs dovetail perfectly: the reading community needs better information on good books, expertise on collection development, and guidance on how to cultivate information literacy skills, and the library community needs more research to document how it fosters better readers.
However, let's not pretend that there aren't differing cultures to meld and nagging misperceptions to dispel. Instead of being outraged at the reading community's call for bigger classroom libraries—at the expense of the school library—we need to dispassionately document for reading experts that a versatile, dynamic school library is an indispensable and cost-effective resource for improving students' reading abilities. Librarians need to make a commitment—and no one is saying it will be easy—to show reading teachers how a partnership will help them achieve their goals.
Not only are school libraries across the nation avidly conducting reading programs, but public libraries are leading the way in their respective communities as purveyors of early-learning outreach services to day-care centers and pre-K programs (see "Teaching Parents to Read ," p. 41). However, in most cases there is no reading research tied to these initiatives and, thus, in the end, what the reading establishment doesn't know is hurting them, and us—and most importantly, our nation's reluctant readers.
Evan St. Lifer, Editor
