As gateway to knowledge, culture, libraries play fundamental role in society. It is a big challenge for many countries especially in Ghana to achieve quality education and one of the problems to this challenge is the inability of governments to invest in the development and management of effective school libraries.
The school library is a center of knowledge for students to achieve the desired level of literacy and numeracy. As a result, school libraries need to be fully equipped and have effective library services to support the teaching and learning process.
Libraries are well known for promoting the profession of knowledge. The International Federation of Library Association (2018) aver that libraries are key entities for achieving sustainable development goals. Therefore, government need to put effective and efficient structures in place that facilitates easy access to timely and quality information.
It is in line with the above that this article seeks to enumerate the importance and some challenges of school libraries.
A library represents different things to different people. For some, a library is a place where books are kept for reference sake. A library offers a means by which one gains access to knowledge.
Others say it is a place where students can study, a service allowing anyone to borrow a book, access the internet or do research.
A school library can be defined as a resource center located within a school where teachers and students have access to a variety of information. According to Library Research Service (2014, para 3) “a school library is a dedicated facility located in and administered by the school that provides at least the following: an organized, circulating collection of printed and /or audio visual and/ or computer based resources or a combination thereof ; paid staff; an established schedule during which services of the staff are available to students and faculty; instructions on using library materials to support classroom standards and improve student research and literacy skills.”
A school library is a place where sustainable literacy, self-education and lifelong learning is inculcated and nurtured to children. Mkumbo (2016) concurs that, using libraries enable people to get opportunities to learn and educate themselves in various aspect related to their daily life as well as building knowledge and understanding the world.
Studies say, in a world without libraries, it will be difficult to advance research as human knowledge or preserve the world’s accumulative knowledge and heritage for future generations.
Mahatma Gandhi postulates, no culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive.
The urge to share and reuse information of knowledge comes in many guises. In this regard, one of the most important function of the library is to preserve our culture for the future generations.
Aims of a Library
Supporting Education
Libraries offer countless learning opportunities that can fuel an all-round development in a country, be it economic, cultural, and social development. From the libraries, students can learn how to produce practical products to aid their communities. An example is Mr. kamkwamba story of how he learnt how to build an energy producing turbine for his village through research from the library.
Preserving cultural heritage.
Culture is very important in our societies and must be preserved for future generations. Most of our culture would have died were it not recorded and preserved for the younger generations.
There are so many cultural works and resources that can be found in the library. For example, the History of Ghana and some tribes within Ghana etc. students and teachers get to know the history and background of so many cultures and traditions of one’s cultural heritage and beyond.
Roles and Functions of a library include;
- Promoting a culture of reading and enhancing information literacy skills.
Students can use the library as a medium to improve upon their reading skills. The library also equips students with information needed in pursuit of their dreams.
- Providing a place for collaborative learning, creativity and for developing independent research.
The library serves as a ground where students can learn together and share ideas. It serves the purpose of enabling the student to be able to learn on his/her own and not only depending on the classroom learning.
- Supporting all educational programs and the school curriculum and
Provide teachers with access to professional development materials (Ashikuzzaman, 2013; Queensland Government, 2014; School Library Association, 2016).
- Libraries provide suitable documents and information helpful in educational programs and extracurricular activities of the school. Libraries makes available textbooks and other additional reading material for all subjects as per the requirement of teachers and students.
- Libraries keep reference books, dictionaries, year books, directives. Encyclopedia etc. so that students and teachers can get help of these other than the text books.
- Libraries provide journals, Newspapers and various aspects of education to keep the teacher and school management updated in their respective areas and on current affairs.
Helgren and Lance (2010) asserts that school libraries have huge impact on student achievement. Thus, they cannot be ignored in the teaching and learning process. It is therefore vital for the nation to be aware of the importance and challenges that affect the proper functioning of a school library and find solution to tackling these problems.
Observations
Studies have also showed that there are various challenges faced by the school libraries thereby making it ineffective in schools. Some of these problems are enumerated below:
Poor stuffing practices: Form studies and experience, it noted that, one of the major problem or challenge faced by most libraries. It is either there is no qualified librarian or only one qualified librarian. Lack of professional staff in the library leads to further challenges such as irrelevant library collection, uncatalogued and poorly organized books. Malanga, (2017) avers that poor staffing leads to lack of information literacy among students. Unprofessional staff also result in inadequate marketing of library service and raising awareness on its role. While qualified librarians can contribute greatly to information literacy work in schools (Agyekum and Filson, 2012).
Poor funding: Poor funding lead to inadequate resources and poor staffing. The issues of school library budget and funding should be discussed and address within the school library policy. Mojapelo (2018) affirms that, lack of funding is a major stumbling block in school library development.
Lack of library policies: A library policy is supposed to offer guidelines for actions and decisions to be taken within the library. Thus, without written guidelines, it would be difficult to have effective library programs. The policy should act as the roadmap to school library management practices.
Lack of awareness of the importance of school library
Poor ICT infrastructure: In this modern world, it is vital to have a robust technological infrastructure within the education system. Unfortunately, the situation in most school
In underdeveloped or developing countries is disheartening. As a result, opportunity for students to use ICT for information access is limited.
Indifferent attitudes of library managers, teachers and students:
Libraries are not marketed and therefore, users are not aware of their significance in education. Due to lack of marketing, some principals, teachers and students do not appreciate the essential role of school libraries.
s in teaching and learning process.
Non-returned of borrowed library materials: This act limits the quantity of resources and library managers are entrusted with that responsibility to make sure books and other materials borrowed must be returned.
Recommendations
- Creation of public relations unit: I agree with Agyekum and Filson (2012) suggesting that school libraries should create public relations unit to perform the following functions:
-Sourcing funds to support the meagre government grands for school libraries.
-To create awareness and educate users on the recognition of the importance of school libraries.
- Establishment of a school library fund: there is the need to introduce library levy which can be collected and managed by the school management committees, parent Teacher Associations in collaboration with school authorities. The school library fund can help reduce dependence on government for library funds (Agyekum and Filson, 2012).
- Establishment of school library departments: according to Malanga (2017) government should introduce a special department under the ministry of education to oversee the establishment, development and management of school libraries across the country.
- Employees to take responsibility: Latif, Ahmed, Satti and Haq (2018) opine that the school management should think of the school library as an instrument in the school development plan, therefore, employees should take account of it in the self-evaluation framework (SEF)/ performing evaluation framework or any job monitoring tools.
- Allocation of library period: Shandu, Evans and Mostert (2014) suggest that, schools should allocate a specific library period to each class. This will allow for library orientation.
Further recommendations by the writer especially to schools in Ghana
- Schools need to work with all the above-mentioned recommendations from the literature so as to change the situation of the school libraries.
- By way of motivating staff, there is the need to have incentives for librarians or those who manage the libraries as this may raised the level of job satisfaction.
- School library committees/ Associations should be more active in setting standards, monitoring and soliciting donations for the school libraries.
- Teachers should cultivate the practice of making use of the library and encouraging students as well on the importance of the library.
- Schools should do well to equip their libraries with ICT equipment as the world is becoming more digital and computer based.
In conclusion, it is hoped that schools in Ghana especially, management of the schools will take into consideration most of what is recommended in this piece so as to have standard libraries in schools. Remember, libraries are the gateway to success.
