Removing School Librarians?

Category: Inspiration for the Nation 2016

Guest Blog by @RhodaK09, as part of the ‘Scotland’s Libraries: Inspiration for the Nation’ Campaign. This blog post originally appeared on the blog STRUPAG

This isn’t a post that I had planned to write. Indeed it isn’t a post that I thought I’d ever need to write and yet here I am. Some of you know that I grew up on an island off the west coast of Scotland. It was the most incredible place to spend my childhood. I left at the age of 17 to study Engineering at University. Having spent some 14 years away I returned to my beautiful home with my husband in December. It’s great to be home, to be surrounded by family, friends and stunning scenery once more. But that’s not what this post is about; I just wanted to give you some background.

You see the local authority here, Argyll and Bute Council, is being forced into making cuts, as are councils across the country. As a result Argyll and Bute Council have recently decided to make some hugely impactful changes. Not only are they removing the only public library services on the island (the mobile library) but they are also removing the post of the school librarian. I’m not quite sure I can adequately convey the disgust I felt upon hearing this news. I know that libraries across the country are facing cuts and closures and truly that breaks my heart. I’m not saying that our story on the island is any more important than these other libraries but I do want to explain the massive impact this will have on the local community as a whole.

[At this point I’d like to note that the Council intends to remove all of the ten librarian posts from the secondary schools in Argyll. It also intends to remove the four mobile libraries serving the region. Full details can be found here (page 122 for mobile libraries, page 161 for school librarians).]

We were lucky to have a fantastic librarian back when I was in school. She encouraged us not only to read, but to learn. She helped us to undertake our own learning. She guided us through our own research, she taught us how to use the internet (yes, it was that long ago), she introduced us to the Dewey Decimal System and she actively encouraged us to be responsible for our own learning.

When I left the island for the big city to study at university I was overwhelmed. Living in the city was something completely foreign to me. I remember my fellow students finding it incredible that I didn’t know how to hail a bus or a taxi. I didn’t even know how to open the doors on a train. Honestly, everything about the city life was new to me. However, when it came to university, things were a little different. Yes, I was terrified by the size of the campus, the classes even, but I had learned enough in my time in school to be able to handle the work that was thrown our way. I could walk into the University library and know what I was doing. I could find a book, browse the internet, research a subject and undertake my own learning and that is largely down to the tools that the school library and school librarian armed me with.

To remove the knowledge, the passion, the care of the school librarian seems, to me, a truly short sighted decision. Many of the children at school here right now will undertake a similar journey to myself – albeit they will probably be more streetwise than I was! However they will be going to college/university without those tools I had, without the well-honed ability to research and undertake their own learning. In fact, in years to come many will be setting foot in a library for the first time!

This leads me to my second point. For some places, removing a school librarian may not seem like a truly catastrophic action. After all, many places have public libraries and librarians to support them and further their love of reading and learning. However, here on the island, not only are they removing the school librarian; they are also planning to remove the only public library facility left to us – the mobile library.

There will be NO library services on the island. There will be no librarians to guide young people. There will be no weekly visit to the library van for the entire community. Young and old alike will be hugely affected. For some older people, the weekly library van visit might be the highlight of their week. It could in fact be the only time they truly converse with someone! For many of the island’s primary schools the mobile library has provided their only library service. It might also be a connection point for parent and child, that weekly trip to the library to choose, read and discuss books!

In a world where we are constantly hearing about the decreasing literacy skills of our nation we are culling the services that could actually help those skills. It’s unfathomable to me.

With no library services on the island, what will become of our island’s literacy skills? What will happen to those young people who dream of going to university? What will happen to the kids who love nothing more than to devour book after book? What about those adults who rely on the library services, whose very trip to the van and weekly reading sessions might just be their lifeline?

I’m truly at a loss as to how we can fight these decisions. We’ve signed petitions, we’ve voiced our extreme concerns and still we are set to lose our librarian and library services. I can only hope that somewhere along the line, before these cuts are implemented, the council will understand how catastrophic these cuts would be to our local communities and the futures of our children.