Tag Archives: print

Arrangement of print collections and existence of libraries

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I was privileged to attend a one day workshop with Kevin Hennah last year. He was looking at library design – the most important part of his session was about the promotion of the print collection in our school libraries. Kevin’s background is retail marketing, in particular display and promotions. He maintains that our customers are our students and teachers and they need to be connected with the product – our library resources. The physical collection – mostly print needs to be seen. He maintains that shelves and shelves of book spines are not very appealing to the customer. He strongly suggests ensuring that the library has as much face out shelving as possible. As far as arrangement is concerned it is up to the librarian to know the needs of the customer. Each library will be different with differing emphasis and customer needs. The one thing that all libraries have that is the same is the high impact areas in terms of the layout of the library. Obviously the entrance to the library and the first things the customer sees are what will make the most impact. Kevin suggests having the best books, new books and hot topic books at these high use areas. No need for fancy displays with lots of writing let the covers speak for themselves.

 I returned to my library after the conference and took lots of photos. I walked in as if I was new to the library, as if I was a customer and realized that as people walked in our doors what did they see? Shelves of books spines. I have worked over a few months to change the way we display our books – now as people walk in they see the same shelving units but instead of hundreds of books on it they see 9 – 12 books on display face out. The current display is books by the two authors coming to our school this month and in March. I put the display up yesterday and already I need to find more books to add to it. The display didn’t even have a sign – just the books. We are making do with shelving and furniture but I hope next year to purchase more display units and stands.

 I think arrangement of the collection should be as flexible as possible. At the moment we have the fiction collection divided into Picture books, I can read books, Primary years books, Young Adult and Adult as well as International Languages. Believe it or not this is a reduction on the number of collection in play when I arrived at the school. I think it is too many but with students from age 3 through to age 18 our entire collection has to cater for a wide range of needs. I hope to create more flexibility with the collection through adding mobile shelving and having shelving that can help create reading areas and collaborative spaces.

 I agree with the Winston Churchill quote Parkes uses “We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us.” Having attended the Kevin Hennah workshop I see the need for more flexibility in our library spaces as we serve school communities with changing and evolving needs. Our collections need to serve those needs and so does our library space.

So if libraries didn’t exist would we build them today?

The key thing about a library for me is all about SHARING. It is about sharing resources, sharing ideas and sharing space. I work in a school that has the word “community” in its name. This sharing environment is all about what fosters community and community fosters sharing – it is a lovely two way street. Even on social media we see people ‘sharing’ links, retweeting information. A few years ago an electronic library came into existence in Bulgaria. People were invited to upload work to it so others could read it. Two major things happened as a result – 1. people visited libraries or purchased the titles that people were uploading because they preferred to read the hard copies and 2. the Government shut the site down proclaiming it was a danger to the public (Masnick, 2010).

I think libraries would exist today – they seem to spring up in so many places without any organisational support. After the Christchurch earthquake in February 2011, old fridges with glass doors were used a local community lending libraries – created by the people in the community who wanted to share their books with each other (Nolan, 2013). These people did not have access to thier badly damaged public libraries so they created their own local versions. I think when you delve into the history of libraries you see that many modern libraries began with wealthy people donating their massive private collection to the community. Libraries are about community and sharing – they are bigger than the building, the staff and the collection.

 

Hennah, K. (2014, September). Rethink. Reinvent. Rejuvenate. Workshop presented at the seventh triennial ECIS librarians’ conference.,     Waterloo, Belgium.

Masnick, M. (2010, June 30). If the public library was invented today, would the Gov’t call it organized crime and shut it down? Retrieved January 10, 2015, from https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100630/12152310025.shtml 

Nolan, S. (2013, April 10). Out of the rubble: Christchurch still bears the 
     scars of earthquake devastation but is finding creative ways to get back on 
     its feet. Daily Mail. Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ 
     article-2307011/ Out-rubble-Christchurch-bears-scars-earthquake-devastation-finding-creative-ways- feet.html
Parkes, D. (2010). Transforming the library – e-books and e-buildings. In D.Parkes & G. Walton (Eds.), Web 2.0 and libraries : impacts,technologies and trends (pp. 13-29). Oxford : Chandos.

The future of children’s literature

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If we were to believe Neil Postman’s vision of our future with the proliferation of media and multimedia the impact on society will mean that our children will no longer be children but small adults. The barrier that was created by print and literacy in print will disappear. Information is accessible by children regardless of skill in reading (Elwell, 2013). I disagree with this position. While children do have access to many forms of information and entertainment their understanding of it and ability to question it, critically examine it and even relate it to their own worlds is limited due to their intellectual development.  There are groups that are actively working to protect children from the influence of many of these forms of media. An example of this is Common sense media with their parent advisory on movies, television and  books  (“Common Sense Media Top Picks,” n.d.). Parents and teachers are aware of the access children have to all media but are working to help them make choices about selecting things they can relate to, that are age appropriate in terms of learning, development  and world experiences.

I see the future of children’s literature as being multimedia. Take for example the Youtube video of B. J Noval reading from his book entitled The Book with no Pictures (Penguin Kids, 2014). I found this video on Facebook – a friend posted in her timeline. After I watched the video I ordered the book. This book has no pictures but the entertainment value is that adults have to read some of the nonsense it contains. The book plays with the idea of text being read aloud and how text works. The characters become the person reading the book and the people listening and enjoying it. The point is – you still need the text in the first place. Who posted this video to Youtube? Not a teacher, not a member of the audience but the publisher. Publishers are realizing that promotion of books comes through multi media and social media.

Some stories are now what are called born-digital. One example is Inanimate Alice which is being written and animated through the web over a period of time (“Inanimate Alice a digital novel,” n.d.). Children are invited to read text and view the video and illustration online. This website was awarded best website for teaching and learning in 2012 by American Association of School Librarians (“Classroom Resources,” n.d.) What is interesting about this example is that while it is an example of the media that Postman says will erode barriers between adults and children it still follows the definition of children’s literature in that it is created by adults for children (Winch, 2006, p. 398). The intended audience is children. It has supporting teaching materials, badges for the readers, so many multimedia expressions yet it requires children to read and view simultaneously.

 This method of reading may be what Zipe is referring to when he writes about young people reading texts much differently to their teachers (p. 42). Indeed there is quite a discussion continuing in many education circles about multiple literacies and how students today read not only print  Zipes argument is that children are being targeted as consumers in our modern society and what they bring to their reading experiences include their consumerism and worldview as viewers/readers of multimedia (p. 44).  I agree that children are influenced greatly by the world around them, the media and their own experiences. I am interested to learn more about how we as librarians and educators can assist the students we work with develop as readers of all forms of text. The future of children’s literature is rich and challenging involving print and electronic forms.

 

References

Boyd, B. (2012, October 29). E-Books and Beyond: The Future of Children’s Literature. [Blog post]. Retrieved from Bill Boyd – The Literacy Adviser website: http://literacyadviser.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/e-books-and-beyond-the-future-of-childrens-literature/

Classroom resources. (n.d.). Retrieved November 29, 2014, from http://www.teachersfirst.com/single.cfm?id=12641

Common sense media top picks. (n.d.). Retrieved November 29, 2014, from https://www.commonsensemedia.org/

Elwell, F. (2013). Neil Postman on the Disappearance of Childhood. Retrieved November 17, 2014, from Rogers State Univeristy website: http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/users/f/felwell/www/Theorists/Essays/Postman1.html

Inanimate Alice a digital novel. (n.d.). Retrieved November 23, 2014, from Inanimate Alice website: http://www.inanimatealice.com/index.html

Penguin Kids. (2014, September 30). The Book With No Pictures by B.J. Novak [Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cREyQJO9EPs

Winch, G. (2006). Literacy: Reading, writing, and children’s literature (3rd ed.). South Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

Zipes, J. (2009). Misreading children and the fate of the book. In Relentless progress the reconfiguration of children’s literature, fairy tales, and storytelling (pp. 27-44). London: Routledge.

 

 

 

 

Censorship, differentiation – same same or not?

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I work in a k-12 International School. Our students age range is from 3 – 19 years. We have one library for our main campus which is k – 12. Our library collection is highly differentiated. we have 6 different areas for fiction from board books through to adult fiction.

A couple of years ago I purchased an award winning book for the Young Adult fiction section based on a review I had read. We do not have English language bookshops near us and this title was not one that was sources in country. Like most of our resources I purchased it sight unseen. The book is ‘Nothing’ by Janne Teller. It has an amazing history – commissioned by the Danish education authority to write the book Teller completed it in 200 and it won awards in Denmark. Here is my personal (as opposed to CSU) blog post about the book and my response to it.

This book is dark. It is on a par with ‘Lord of the Flies’ by William Golding but in some ways is more extreme. I read the book and instantly wondered if it was in the right collection. The Young Adult collection is read by grades 5 – 8. My concern was that a fifth grader might pick it up. I decided not to change it on my own thoughts so I gave it to our Deputy Principal and a trusted senior student to read. Their reactions – like me they couldn’t put the book down. Like me they felt it belonged in the in the adult fiction section. We all agreed that the subject matter and the resolution of it at the end of the book was adult in nature and therefore not suitable for an elementary school student to read.

This is a very long explanation for my question. I am asking myself this as much as you my classmates: By placing certain books in certain parts of our collection am I censoring them? Teller’s book is still available to our school community to read. Yet – if a fifth grade student was borrowing a book from the adult fiction collection we would look at it carefully and think about whether the student could handle the content. When I look at the definition which started this part of the module, ” Censorship is the conscious effort of an individual, group or government agency … to prevent access to whatever is available to be read, seen or heard.” The ALA World encyclopaedia of library and information services (1980, p.124) I think I have been a censor.

Yet do we not have a responsibility to place the most appropriate resources at the right place for our students? We also have a growing DVD collection. We use colour codes and censorship ratings on the spines of the movies to help students select age appropriate materials and we do not lend out material that is not age appropriate. A few years back we had an irate parent come in with the movie ‘Love Actually’ demanding that we remove it from the collection because of tits explicit nature. Very calmly I showed her that on the cover there is a censorship rating which we follow. She was the one who borrowed the DVD not her children. Our collection is used bu the whole family. She was most relieved when I explained our policy of not lending DVD’s to children unless it was age appropriate. How do we know this? We follow a censorship rating.

So there seem to be times when it is appropriate to censor material for our students – such as not allowing young children access to adult content DVD’s. This is for their protection. I think this issue of censorship is not as black and white as we imagine. I am wondering where the idea of values and morals and ethics come into it. Why are we comfortable about censoring visual media but not print?

I fear I have made myself out to be thought police kind of librarian. Believe me I am not. I work hard to try to be self aware enough not to allow my own prejudices to get in the way of balanced collection development. I defend the child’s right to read what they want to read. I also say to them it is okay not to finish a book if you get bored with it or if it offends or worries you. My own child abandoned an award winning book a few years ago because it had too much swearing in it. That book was returned to the shelves for other children to read and enjoy.

I wrote this to the class forum hoping to spark some discussion…