Is the library an anachronism

In a world where we no longer need physical spaces in which to store books, Tricia Kelleher considers whether the school library has become outmoded...

The concept of a school library in a digital age is challenging. With the capacity to download books onto a range of digital devices there is every possibility the library could look superfluous to youngsters growing up today. Why would you want to visit a room which is essentially about storage and distribution? This question has exercised the mind of my school because senior school students are already equipped with iPads. We had to consider what for many teachers is the unthinkable – is the library an anachronism? A resource to be discarded as no longer fit for purpose?

If we view the library as purely a function of lending books, this is indeed the case. However, we felt very strongly that the library is more than a facilitating process – it has cultural significance. It is with good reason that the great Library of Alexandria is remembered today as a fulcrum of intellectual curiosity and invention. It was here that Archimedes invented the screwshaped water pump; Eratosthenes measured the diameter of the Earth; and Euclid discovered the rules of geometry. The Renaissance witnessed the exponential growth in libraries with the invention of printing. What interests me is not just the explosion of the printed word but the inspirational library spaces built to curate them. The Vatican Library is illustrative of the artistry of the Renaissance and the sense that this is not just a repository for books but an iconic crucible for learning.

So what does this mean for a school? It is my belief that the library has the capacity to enjoy its own renaissance. Because of the digital revolution it is no longer just about the printed book: as a space, it is about inspiring young people. The design brief for the libraries in our junior and senior schools is premised on inspiration. In the junior school, the task was to create a space all about the power of the story. The ‘story courtyard’ complements a room configured to invite children to engage and explore. It beckons them into a world all about the imagination. In both spaces there will be cultural signifiers – the lamp post in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe or a disappearing white rabbit. The senior school library continues the journey. Here we aim to combine the power of the story with a concept premised on the Cabinet of Curiosities. (Curiosity in its purest sense where a student’s learning is entirely unrelated to examination specifications – encouraging learning for its own sake.) This re-orientation of our library is dependent on the evolution of the role of the librarian. Whilst the junior school librarian has the joy of engaging the children in reading, in the senior school, the librarian function has been divided into two: the Curator of the Cabinet of the Curiosities and the Digital Researcher.

The guiding concept behind our new Cabinet of Curiosities is rich in all sorts of ways, particularly its focus on 3D ‘objects’. Artefacts immediately connect us to the past and other cultures. Looking at and handling objects also makes us think about how they were created. This thought process leads to a deeper understanding of the object’s function and meaning.When we encounter a new object, we immediately want to place it in a material and social matrix. A Cabinet of Curiosities is also a collection, and a collection is a miniature world or ‘culture’. Again, it makes us think about why things ‘go together’. And we shouldn’t underestimate the appeal of that which is strange. We don’t know what a Cabinet of Curiosities is going to contain or how the objects will be arranged. Estrangement makes us think afresh.

The other crucially important aspect of the librarian’s role is as digital researcher, enabling students to become 21st century scholars capable of careful discrimination of all the sources available to them. We are all prone to treating Google as an oracle, without thinking about how knowledge of our world is structured and ratified. Such an expert will provide students with a contextualised and nuanced understanding of digital tools and resources.

The digital age, therefore, far from sounding the death knell of libraries, offers schools an opportunity to create their own distinctive library space. Libraries have a history of offering inspiration and acting as crucibles of independent thought – they also have a future.