School Libraries May Soon Be History (computers instead of books)

School Libraries May Soon Be History
by Paul C. Clark
Staff Writer
January 22, 2009

Quick, thoroughly unscientific visual surveys of the libraries – called "media centers" in eduspeak – of Guilford County high schools of late give the impression that they're hardly beehives of activity, at least as far as books are concerned. The percentage of space dedicated to books instead of computers seems to have shrunk over the years, and a scan of the shelves turns up relatively few newly acquired books.

The use of the term media center shows that librarians – or "media specialists" – are dealing with a shift away from the printed word, and studies have repeatedly shown that the percentage of readers is declining among the US population, and sharply among teens and young adults.

A 2007 study by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) found that reading, and reading skills, were dropping throughout the US population and plummeting for teens, particularly male teens. The study found a 14 percent decline in daily readers among 13-year-olds over the last 20 years, and a doubling of the percentage of 17-year-olds who don't read, from 9 percent to 19 percent, between 1984 and 2004.

The explosion of online sources of information is a boon to research – the figures above came from the NEA website – but, surely, the printed word is still indispensable to public education.

Maybe not, according to the Guilford County Board of Education's Construction Advisory Committee, which is looking for ways to build less expensive schools. The committee, as part of an ongoing review of the school system's construction specifications, is looking for underutilized space to eliminate from schools.

That space is turning up in what, for those who have been out of school for a while, seems like odd places. The library is one of them.

Members of the committee said the use of school media centers for reading books is dropping, and books eat up a large amount of space. They said that, at some point, school systems are going to have to start giving serious thought to eliminating libraries entirely.

"If the media center doesn't require space for books, and it's really just a computer space, it seems to me that you can cut down the space drastically," said committee member Gary Paul Kane. "I'm just not sure why you need a media center at all."

Committee members said that, in five years, every student may have a laptop computer or other reading device, making libraries as such redundant, or at least cost ineffective.

At this point, no one is taking serious steps to eliminate libraries from new Guilford County schools. But committee members said two trends are making such a move likely in the long run: the decline in the use of books and the increasing decentralization of schools. The current trend is toward learning clusters, or group centers, which are small groups of classrooms with their own books and computers. Committee members said that moving research tools, especially computers, closer to students makes sense, particularly as the use of library stacks, which can't be easily decentralized, drops.

Ironically, as the use of school libraries has dropped, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction (NCDPI) has pushed for larger school libraries. The NCDPI now calls for 4 to 6 square feet of space per student in the main room of each school library.

Committee members said, however, that the push for larger library rooms is largely driven by the fact that libraries, along with auditoriums, are the biggest spaces for meetings in schools. They said it may eventually make sense to build larger multipurpose rooms to accommodate meetings, or to combine meeting and gym space, rather than to combine book and meeting space.

Another area the committee members said has become increasingly redundant is the shower space traditionally attached to school gyms. They said the feedback they get from teachers indicates that fewer and fewer students take showers after gym class, and that students, like the rest of society, expect more privacy. They said that locker room space has been reduced in new schools and could probably be reduced even further without anyone missing it.

The NCDPI's facilities guidelines for new schools recognize the decrease in showering among students, but don't call for eliminating showers.

"Although use of showers has declined in recent years, some showers should be provided that can be used for both P.E. and athletics," the guidelines read. "To encourage their use and maintain modesty, private shower stalls with enclosed dressing areas, small bench and several clothes hooks should be provided for both boys and girls."

In addition to increased calls for privacy, disciplinary worries have also reduced the demand for locker rooms. If you remember high school locker rooms as a bullying nightmare, you're probably right. The NCDPI writes, "Locker and dressing rooms tend to be high abuse areas and should be visible from P.E. teachers' offices to reduce vandalism and violence."

Those of us to who grew up with school libraries and who took showers after P.E., and to whom the lack of them sounds like a recipe for a smelly, illiterate future, may just have to join the 21st century. Schools change with society at large, and showers and libraries may just have to go the way of cursive writing. A recent Rhino Times story highlighted what parents say is a trend of otherwise high performing students who, introduced to computers at an early age and rarely, if ever, required to write longhand, never acquire the skill of writing, or sometimes even reading, cursive script.

The library-and-locker-room debate is part of the Construction Advisory Committee's efforts to increase the efficiency of future Guilford County Schools. Guilford County Schools administrators argue that the schools they built with the 2000 and 2003 school bonds didn't cost more per square foot than other schools in the state. That's true, but the school system tends to build more square footage per student, and use more land per school, than is the norm.

The 26 high schools built in North Carolina since 2002 average, according to the NCDPI, 178 square feet of building per student. Northern Guilford High School has 220 square feet of building per student, and the new Eastern Guilford High School has 225 square feet of building per student.

That gives Northern and Eastern the most space per student of all but two of the 26 high schools: Maiden High School in Catawba County, bid in 2004, which has 250 square feet per student, and Overhills High School in Harnett County, bid in 2002, which has 231 square feet per student.

In addition to square footage per student, the committee is looking at what's called the net-to-gross ratio of Guilford County Schools – the ratio of net, or program, space in a school to gross space – overall space including things like hallways and bathrooms.

Even if Guilford County Schools took a radical approach to school construction and eliminated all libraries and locker rooms, it probably wouldn't significantly improve the net-to-gross ratio in new schools, as some new programs have created a need for new space.

Committee members cited as an example the After-school Care Enrichment Services (ACES) program, which provides tutoring and recreation after school in elementary schools. They said such programs need office and storage space to avoid conflicts with current faculty.

"With more and more working parents, that's the sort of program that's going to increase, if anything," said Sue Robertson of the Planning Alliance, a New Orleans-based educational planning service that ran the process of creating the Guilford County Schools educational specifications for new schools.

The Construction Advisory Committee, formed at the instigation of former school board member Anita Sharpe and chaired by school board member Darlene Garrett, is trying to rein in the cost of schools, something some school board members said is critical in the wake of the school board's often criticized management of the 2003 school bond.

New school board member Paul Daniels, a recent addition to the committee, said many county residents tell him the school board goofed on the 2003 bond projects and needs to limit construction costs.

"We need to build adequate schools, but I don't think we can continue in good faith to spend the amount of money we're spending on schools," Daniels said. "We've got an opportunity to do the right thing, or to fall on our face."

This afternoon, I pulled an old book off my shelf. It was published in 1928. I had picked it up at a yard sale. How many other people had read and enjoyed that book?

I have a closet full of old textbooks, encyclopedias, novels, etc. that I pick up at a yearly "Book Nook" sale we have in my area. I love reading the little notes and stuff I find in them and wondering what the person who wrote them was like. Also the encyclopedias show that even in the past history changed depending on the year and the politics of the time they were written.

I fear that we are moving in the direction of filtered information. The net control which is being exercised in China will be arriving here soon enough. The free internet as we have it now will have a short life span. We may have to revert to hand printed samizdat pamphlets as did dissidents in the old USSR. I fear conservatism will have to go underground as I fear a police state is on the horizon.

Paranoid you say? I think Santayana was right, ignoring the past leads to amnesia and repetition.

Ideas are more powerful than guns. If we don't let our people have guns, why should we let them have ideas?
-- Josef Stalin

Most librarians are leftists and any critiques of the past worker’s paradises is verboten. With all the revisionism going on we can imagine book burnings and lauding Hitler as ahead of his time for getting rid of carbon footprints on an industrial scale.

Actually, Tri-Media Marketing Technologies in Canada has discovered a way to make sure every student is protected. The Kansas Securities Commissioner is making sure every child can beehive.ihive with the best. The investors are the kids’ friends.

They can’t ban books, so they’ll just stop building libraries.

Nice.

The oldest book I own (A History of the British Empire) was printed in 1868 - it's still readable

I have computer disks only 20 years old that can no longer be read.

26 posted on 01/25/2009 4:43:08 AM PST by Oztrich Boy (This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel - Horace Walpole)

This is NOT good at all! Who are the ones who will be in charge to make sure “ALL” books are on computers? The revisionist? Who is to say we will be able to get unrevised historical documents?

NO WAY will this work !

They don’t need books if they don’t teach students to read.
The uneducated are easy to rule.

A few years ago when we sold the house to consolidate into a retirement condo, I went through our collection of over 6000 books to winnow it to the essentials. I realized that for over 95% of them, we would read a book once and then put it on the shelf. That experience made me a total convert to the idea of e-books.

Today, Tor Publishing gives away a few of its novels in PDF form. As a sales strategy, it works: I read the free ones and would like to buy PDFs of more of their works. But they haven't made the obvious connection to the idea of selling e-book versions to accompany the freebies.

“The wave of the future for publishing.”

Indeed. I switched to a Sony Ebook a few months ago. I can download books for less than the cost of paper book, I can enlarge the text to fit my weakening eyesight, I can read in bed with the lights off, store hundreds of books on a 10 dollar media chip, and do markups in the book with a stylus. Best thing that ever happened to books.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.