The Biggest Losers
Going bookless is sure to shortchange your children
Brian Kenney, Editor-in-Chief -- School Library Journal, 10/1/2009
Dear Cushing Academy Parents:
Soon, your child will have access to one of the most innovative secondary school libraries in the country. Over half-a-million dollars are being invested to transform your library into an interactive learning center with monitors providing news feeds, state-of-the-art computing, a cyber-cafe (with a $12,000 cappuccino machine!), and much more.
To make room for these new additions—the brainchild of headmaster James Tracy—the school is getting rid of its 20,000 book collection and replacing it with 18 digital readers, such as the Kindle. Tracy explained to SLJ that bookshelves wasted precious room that could be put to better use.
This model of 21st-century learning is exactly what today’s students need: collaborative work spaces, enough technology to navigate the digital world, and instruction on how to evaluate online sources. Only there’s one big problem: the headmaster didn’t do his homework. By tossing out the print collection, Tracy has put expediency ahead of reality. And the ones who will suffer are your kids.
Maybe you think I’m biased because I edit a library magazine. But I have no special love for the physical book. Libraries need to continuously evolve, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see a print-free library in my lifetime. Just not next year.
Why?
Libraries aren’t just about instructing students in finding and assessing information. Librarians also work to develop a love of reading in students that leads to increased literacy skills. We do this by encouraging free or voluntary reading—reading because you want to. But don’t take my word for it. According to education researchers like Stephen Krashen, kids need books that they find so compelling, they don’t want to stop reading them. Browsing YouTube, reading snippets on CNN.com, and updating their MySpace pages aren’t enough. We need to make it easy for kids to get their hands on books, lots and lots of them, carefully selected with students in mind.
Tracy says the library isn’t going bookless, just paperless. He’s wrong.
I don’t know where the millions of books he claims your children can access will come from. Yes, you can assemble a limited collection of ebooks, mainly nonfiction, which will support the curriculum. But the books freely available on the Internet—like those scanned through the Google Books Library Project—are largely classics or they’re old, obscure, and scholarly tomes.
Want to encourage reading? Then take advantage of the 86 titles on the 2009 Best Books for Young Adults list created by the Young Adult Library Services Association. Too bad your children will only have access to a handful of them—since most aren’t available digitally. And even if they were, according to a recent study of more than 3,000 teens by Teenreads.com, young adults prefer print (look for the full study in the October 26 issue of Publishers Weekly).
What else has gotten lost? Books that brilliantly marry print and text, like Barry Denenberg’s Lincoln Shot: A President’s Life Remembered, which engage readers (often reluctant ones) in different ways. And don’t forget graphic novels, which most school libraries can’t keep on their shelves. I could go on and on.
Wherever your children go after Cushing, they’ll need 21st-century skills to succeed. These include the ability to read fearlessly and the capacity to navigate information-dense worlds.
Drop Headmaster Tracy a line. Congratulate him on having the courage to innovate. Then suggest that he stop placing his theories ahead of his students’ needs and let the books back into the library.
