Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The
University of British Columbia
[permission to reproduce granted if authorship is acknowledged]
It won’t surprise anyone
that, having spent my career in academia, I love books. Even my friends who
share my love of books find it surprising that I read three of the four volumes
of the Robert Caro biography of Lyndon Johnson on my smartphone.
My introduction to libraries
began before I went to elementary school. My mother and my sister would take me
to a very large public library almost every Saturday when family chores had
been completed. There was an area in the children’s section that was enclosed
with an oak railing. The librarian would gather interested children there at
different times of the day and read to them. One of the things I liked best
about the public library was that I had my own card and could borrow as many as
six books at a time.
The library in my elementary
school was three storage rooms situated at
the ends of three floors of our school, rather than one large repository for
books like the public library. Groups of students from each class had a
regularly scheduled library time each week. Each week our appointed group would
go the library to peruse the books that were lined up along the side and rear
walls and select one or more to read. At
the end of library period, students would take their books to two kids, called
library monitors, who sat at a table and checked them out by stamping the due
date on a slip of lined paper glued inside the back cover of each book. Being a
library monitor was a privilege! Library monitors were rewarded with extra time
to explore the books that lined the shelves.
The Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL) is a huge institution
serving a diverse population of more than 4 million in a region with more than
13 million people. Its size affords it economies of scale that are not likely
evident in small public libraries. LAPL offers an impressive suite of services
under the banner of student
success: free, one-to-one online tutoring for K-12 and adults;
workshops to help student prepare for post-secondary applications; and a wide
variety of e-media resources. Every student in the Los Angeles Unified School
District (LAUSD) receives a student success card granting them access,
borrowing privileges, access to tutors, and “no fines – ever.”
Most families do not have the resources or the ability to
provide tutoring and homework assistance for their children. Yes, there are
some very useful e-resources available on the Internet. But even the best of
the resources available on the Internet are not aligned with the curriculum as
organized in the region. The LAPL’s focus on students in the LAUSD attempts to
ensure such alignment.
Something organized along similar lines at the provincial
level would be a welcome addition to what school boards try to provide,
achieving economies of scale impossible for libraries serving small or medium
size populations.
Given the social and technological changes of the past century,
it is doubtful that children and youth will have the same affinity for books
that I did. They are afforded rich opportunities that I could not have imagined
as a child. LAPL’s student success initiative with its curated collection of resources
is helping to forge a connection with children and youth in a media saturated,
digital environment in which today’s student live.