We often hear our parents or older generations telling us “during our time we spent hours in the library just to do our assignments and research, but now you have it one click away”. What happen to the library service in this 21st century? Are books there for decorations? How many pounds of dust can we get when we wipe those books? To be honest, how many times in your schooling have you visited a library? But wait, the first question should be, do you have library in your school? And if you have, is it functioning or just a stock room of old textbooks?
I have been in Public School for couple of decades, both as student and teacher, and to be honest I have never experienced a good library services when I was in elementary and high school. This saddens me because library has a tremendous function in cultivating our minds and skills. Just like the body need food, our brain needs knowledge from books. It is funny to realize that school canteens are far popular than a school library. In canteen we spend money even most of the times just to eat junk food. Likewise, we spend time, maybe not only to eat but to talk. Library is free, and it can make us better people with wisdom, which a food cannot give. But can we blame these children for not visiting our libraries? What are we doing as teachers and school leaders to make our libraries worth visiting? Does the government have enough support for better library services? By the way in our city, where is the City Library?
Library is a school service, thus improving it must be collective efforts of all inside and outside the school. For this purpose, I conducted an online interview of former students and colleagues on their ideas on how to improve library services. These are the responses of teachers: Maintenance of school library management. Member management- teachers & students can create online profile for provision of convenient access to library; Next generation cataloguing- librarians can create customized catalogue for books, IMs and other resources; and Mobile library landscape- Students can conveniently access library collections thru their gadgets anywhere. Librarian can schedule programs using calendar events and share it thru members from online profiling.
By: Maria Alma D. Estioko |Teacher III|Sta. Rita High School|Olongapo City
