Sooner or later, less library book purchasing was bound to take its toll on suppliers. Which brings us to spring 2008. Canada’s book trade journal Quill and Quire reported in its May issue (and earlier online) that one Ontario library wholesaler was closing down and another had laid off staff. National Book Service, based in North York, ceased operations at the end of March after 27 years in business.

Meanwhile, its competitor, S&B Books, laid off three employees in March. “We’re overstaffed based on the volume,” said owner Arthur Gale, who attributed the layoffs to a seasonal slowdown (school budgets not yet approved) and to restructuring in advance of a new computer system.

These changes in Ontario do not bode well for library wholesalers in other provinces. How are BC wholesalers doing, for instance? Good news that would be celebrated by the Association of Book Publishers of BC as well as school librarians from Alert Bay to Zeballos would be reinstatement by the provincial government of the School Library Book Purchase Plan.

RESOURCES:
Association of Book Publishers of BC. Library Book Purchase Plan. http://www.books.bc.ca/librarybookcat.php [accessed May 26, 2008].
Kalinowski, Tess. (2005, March 11). Shelves of musty books. Toronto Star.
MacDonald, Scott. (2008, May). National Book Service calls it quits. Quill & Quire, 22.
National Book Service. Company website. http://www.nbs.com [accessed May 26, 2008].
S&B Books. Company website. http://www.sbbooks.com/ [accessed May 26, 2008].
Sheen, Jacob. (2008, May). S&B lays off three. Quill & Quire, 22–23.

Naomi Pauls
Writer / Editor

The Friends of the School Library (FOSL) believe that qualified teacher-librarians serve as key partners working with students, their families, local community agencies and public libraries to foster a love of Canadian culture, libraries and reading. This year’s budget, in keeping with the Vancouver School District’s goal of achieving excellence in student learning, needs to support school library programs so they are staffed with qualified teacher-librarians who work to positively influence that outcome. Thank you for recognizing the many roles and responsibilities of teacher-librarians with adequate funding: for recognizing that for many children their only experience with technology, books and libraries occurs within elementary and secondary schools; that course development teams benefit by the inclusion of teacher-librarians to critically select electronic/print resources; and that qualified teacher-librarians play a role in mentoring beginning teachers and contribute to staff development programs to educate teachers about the changing array of information technologies and ways of engaging digital learners.

We would like to address two major school library issues the Vancouver School Board to should consider in the coming months.

We ask that:
The District set a minimum standard for technology in libraries to ensure equitable access to computers and technology instruction across all libraries within the District.

FOSL would like to know:
Do all elementary school libraries have a minimum allotment of computers?
When technology is purchased for schoolS labs, is there consideration of the technology needs for the school library?
Do teacher-librarians have access to instructional technology for teaching the information literacy skills that students will need for post-secondary education?
Do students have opportunities for instruction that supports inquiry or research using technology and electronic resources?
Why is there such a ‘digital divide’ across the District so exacerbated by the ability of parents to fundraise that one westside school library has 30 computers and other school libraries have student computers not powerful enough to load free online newspapers?
Do we really need yet another object lesson for children in less affluent neighbourhoods that this is yet another set of ‘playground equipment’ unavailable to them?

We ask that:
The District set minimum staffing levels for school libraries that will guarantee reasonable access to collections, connections and a welcoming physical space.

Given that there will be a reduction in incremental time for next year, if there is no basic minimum of service, there is a risk that school library time in some schools will be reduced yet agaihn. Some schools have only .1 of an FTE. How low can we go? How many schools at .1 is too many?

As well, having learned recently that the Ministry of Education is requiring each district to submit a contract for literacy, we would like to ask what the role of school libraries is in this process?
Libraries advance literacy. How does Vancouver’s literacy contract reflect this?

School District Management teams make decisions that have an impact well beyond the realm of individual schools or districts and those decisions should be made after assessing current research and best practice recommendations. They might consider that a study of Canadian publishers finds that; ‘they consider the loss of teacher-librarians to have broken their connection with children, fueled the loss of independent booksellers, and subsequently gutted Canadian publishing for children.’ Without them there will be a conspicuous hush; many students will not find certain kinds of voices in the materials available for them.

The District might consider the 2006 Provincial Health Officer’s Annual Report ‘An Ounce of Prevention Revisited.’ which is a review of health promotion and selected outcomes for children and youth in BC schools which finds that “students who feel a strong connection to school are less likely to attempt suicide, use hard drugs, smoke cigarettes, use marijuana, binge drink, carry a weapon to school, fight, have poor health, etc. etc.” Given the importance of connectedness, the BC Health Officer recommends closely study[ing] the “best” schools/school districts and sharing the lessons learned and promising practices from schools/school districts with high levels of connectedness”.

I would be willing to bet that the schools with the most connected students have a school library they feel welcome in throughout the day, where their artwork is on the wall, where they can volunteer and where the teacher librarian can give them the gift of their time.

District policy based on high standards of attainment for information literacy through quality school library collections, services and staff are needed to establish basic minimums that are both sustainable and equitable. We urge the Senior Management Team to develop such district benchmarks. We wish you success in the year ahead and thank you for all your hard work.

Yours truly,
Friends of the School Library

RESOURCES
Provincial Health Officer’s Annual Report (2006). An Ounce of Prevention Revisited.
A review of health promotion and selected outcomes for children and youth in BC schools. (http://www.health.gov.bc.ca/pho/annual.html).

Saltman, J and Edwards, G. Creativity and Passion: 40 Years of Publishing for Children in Canada. Presentation at BCLA, April 19, 2008.

Libraries overflow with things to read, on paper and on-screen. What is ‘not to get’ about school libraries and literacy?
Perhaps we are blindsided in the scramble to attain higher reading comprehension scores while avoiding the fallout of the” information explosion”. Or we are distracted by the sound of grinding axes anxious to cash in on the definition - just add the word literacy to the following terms: functional; cultural; multicultural; information; media; visual; computer; mathematical; scientific; new media; digital; technology; and global. We feel the pressure to provide Band-Aid solutions; send in the literacy troops, buy more laptops.

Is the library - literacy connection too obvious?

It is hard to separate the process of reading from the reading material itself.

But simply put…Kids + books = literacy.

Now, kids can be led to books, and they can decide to watch hockey instead. Let loose in the most beautifully-designed library with comfy chairs and volumes of age-appropriate, enticing reading material - they can still choose to zone out. There is no shortcut to literacy. We learn to read by reading. Non-readers become readers by reading beginner books, which enables them to read books just a bit harder, which allows them to grasp more sophisticated writing and concepts.

We need inspired teachers and teacher-librarians to lead us on the path to literacy, but books are perhaps the more subtle, and throughout our lives, the more powerful teachers. Without knowing it, we, as readers, absorb not only the phrases and vocabulary, but also the thoughts, images, values and visions of the writer. To a literate person, the library is a world of collective wisdom, a map to everywhere. No wonder it is the cornerstone of our schools, society, and institutions.

Further reading

A Call to Action: What We Know About Adolescent Literacy and Ways to Support Teachers in Meeting Students’ Needs; A Position/Action Statement from NCTE’s Commission on Reading
May 2004
http://www.ncte.org/about/over/positions/category/read/118622.htm

Judith Comfort
Teacher-librarian

Dr. Charles Best Secondary School Library, Coquitlam

Take my kid for example. He’s 15 and this is how he does his homework: Ears are plugged and wired to rap rap rap; eyes are flitting between screens: left to TV hockey, right to candy glow, diving through windows, Facebook pokes from messaging pals, to www.yale.edu, to Merriam-Webster (online), to Google (images - search), along the way kidnapping text and images and audio and video to paste, without glue, uncensored, into his word doc homework - and almost by-passing his brain.

You have to wonder if anything sticks.

Another example of the new homework in the digitized school library: 17-year-old students, of a course titled, no less grand than Comparative Civilization - line up at the printer, laboriously spitting out Sphinxes and Mona Lisas. Great world mysteries elude the brains of these students, who barely give the facsimiles a glance before stapling them to ripped-off paragraphs, to be handed in as their very own.

Students have always sought an easy way out of homework, taking the intellectual property of others, and pretending it was their own. But in the olden days of book and magazine research, every borrowed phrase and idea had gone through a catharsis of writer, editor and publisher. Now teachers cannot tell the difference between essays composed of online paragraphs and those of their students, because they are equally flawed.

Not that teachers aren’t getting more savvy. They teach about the evils of plagiarism (from the Latin: plagirius, kidnapper). In course descriptions, they warn about stern consequences. Research essays are assigned with extreme note taking systems - ” Do not under any circumstances write any of your own ideas on the same sheet of paper that has quotations from other sources.” The mantra is quote, cite, quote, cite. The latest adaptation of teachers is to set up creative booby traps to ensure the single user essay (Compare Anna Karenina to your mother; Create your own planet and
describe how you would build a swimming pool on it).

Behind the 8-ball is the CAD (formerly known as drafting) teacher, whose digitized assignments could theoretically be done by only one student in a class of 30, e-mailed to the remaining 29, and with names changed to protect the guilty, all electronically submitted within minutes. Forced to adapt to the new technological challenges, the teacher adds a personal creative spin to the assignment and now has to take triple the time to mark 30 individualized assignments.

In class the temptation to check out Facebook, chat with Jared in the next computer classroom, or play at addictinggames.com is too much.

We put amusement machines under the noses of the kids and then expect them not to play. We give them computers, with drone-like brilliance to copy stuff and to instantly link minds world - wide. And the kids, adaptable and fresh, with a compelling need to connect, have taken to them, like ducks to water.

But make no mistake. Computers are not teaching machines, unless the content of the instruction is computers. “Interactive” sites are ok at best, compared to the interactivity of a flesh and blood teacher with an imagination.

A computer connected to the Internet may be school library at a child’s fingertips. But entrance to a room full of books does not guarantee a student will read or make sense of anything. The burgeoning volume of information is no reason to be impressed. The world is large and complex. Always has been.

Internet data comes flying at kids out of the blue, out of context. A book at least has some kind of order, usually chronological, or thematic and a door to open it; a contents page and an index.

A good book has the presence of the writer and is more like a living teacher, whose job is to inspire students to think, analyze, compare, synthesize, and create.

Accessing information instantly does not make anyone learn faster. Reading with understanding is a subtle process that takes time.

Instead of a neck-crunching, eye-scrunching hour in front of a monitor, try this. Lay out the 32 “black heirloom” volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica, the “over 44 million words”…”written and revised by the world’s foremost scholars and experts, including many Nobel Prize winners” on a table, and ponder how much you don’t know. Be awestruck.

So, who or what has been kidnapped?

Perhaps it is the teachers who need to create faster-and-faster in- class songs-and-dances, to keep up with the fragmented, multi- tasking young minds sitting before them. Taking time from precious one-on-one with students, preparation and contemplation, they are busy wrestling with report card and attendance software, scooting kids off the toys, and adding ugly confrontations with addicted game
players to their school day.

Perhaps it is the school boards caught up in a whirlwind of computer expenditures, replacing teachers, librarians, textbooks and library books with upgrades, laptops and techie handmaidens to keep the damn things going?

Or is it the kids, who click as easily as they breathe?

Judith Comfort

Teacher-librarian
Dr. Charles Best Secondary School Library, Coquitlam

This conundrum was presented to an audience last week at the Burnaby Public Library by Mr. Keith McPherson and Dr. Marlene Asselin both experts in media information at UBC. Further statistics from “Young Canadians in a Wired World” (www.media-awareness.ca/english/research/ycww/index.cfm) note that 94% of these young people access the internet from home, 34% have been bullied online, 33% of their top 50 websites include violent and sexual content, and that 75% do not realize they are being advertised to through the Net. In such an environment, Asselin and McPherson pointed out, it is critical that students become more aware. Basic literacy remains an essential skill, they contend, but critical literacy is, well, critical. McPherson, assured parents and teachers present that with critical thinking skills “mental habits that foster justice, honesty, and ethical treatment of others” will have a better chance of prevailing.

With teachers such as Asselin and McPherson in our midst one can feel more confident that the young people who will be in charge of the world are in good hands. Already we know that they are what these teachers call active participants who are goal-oriented, believe in choice and variety and are active decision-makers. They are also an economic force. They believe in connectivity and community, they take action, are early adopters and are passionately tolerant. They creative ‘personal landscapes’ in the way they learn, shop and work. They learn by doing, they multi-task and importantly they believe in social transformation.

These are the leaders of the future. We are in good hands it seems but we must as parents and teachers ensure that they get the critical thinking skills they themselves say they need. All the more reason, in my view, that we ensure that teacher-librarians who are so well placed to take on this task, have the resources to undertake such an important social role. Every school in the province needs a teacher-librarian with enough hours to teach the skills our children will need in this ever-changing and demanding environment and so that, as Mr. McPherson so eloquently put it, all students can fulfill their dreams.

Margaret Reynolds, Executive Director, Association of Book Publishers of BC

Pam often shows up for author events at schools with her kayak!

So, Pam Withers is no shrinking violet.

When you talk to Pam about school libraries she says:

“As a teenager, I liked nothing better than to “hide” in the library, surrounded by the comfort and stimulation of books. Somehow, the librarian always knew just how much to help me, and just how much to leave me to my own devices. Simply by her warm but unobtrusive presence, I felt like I was in a special place, and that she approved of my love of reading. Anyway, it was far quieter
in there than at home amongst five siblings! To me, librarians are essential to growing a child’s love of reading and research, which is nothing less than essential for navigating one’s way through life. Every community should cherish and celebrate their librarians.”

David Bouchard, successful author and motivational speaker, and a self-confessed reluctant reader has this to say in his keynote speech to the More Than Words Conference 2007:

“You must learn to openly discuss, plan for and prioritize literacy. Everything you do can and should have literacy at the forefront. From the money that you allocate to individual boards, to the resources that you make available to them, to the curriculum and the systems you provide and recommend for teachers to use as report cards, each and every one of these things must reflect that for which your public is crying out – literate graduates!”

Advocacy for school libraries is a necessity. We need to focus on the many roles of the school library and the worth of the teacher librarian.

Libraries are a Commons: both calm haven and gathering place.
Libraries are a Repository: of books, knowledge, information.
Librarians are a Resource: for administrators, their teaching colleagues, students and parents

Catherine Howett