Importance Of The School Library

Schools must have a dedicated space as a school library for learning and promoting reading in children

In the educational field, one of the spaces that can produce the greatest help to encourage reading in children and young people is the use of a school library.

School libraries should be an essential element in all schools due to the benefits it brings to children. Next, we tell you the importance of a school library for the little ones.

The library as a collaborative space

Today, there is still the concept that a library is only good for study and that the information professionals who work in them are constantly asking for silence.

Libraries are spaces where opinions are exchanged on tastes in reading, authors or even movies and series. For this reason, changing these types of ideas that you have about these spaces will help to improve.

The school library should be seen as a place where children do not have to be forced to choose a book and read it silently, quite the opposite. A collaborative space should be created where the important thing is for the child to choose a book that can really attract their attention based on their tastes and then be able to share it with their classmates.

The role played on the one hand by teachers and on the other by the librarian who manages the school library is highly relevant,  since they will be the professionals in charge of getting children to really choose readings that they like and not readings out of obligation.

And we must be aware that a school library cannot be managed by the teachers themselves, who take turns in their spare time. We must have an information professional who knows everything the library contains.

If the school library can be made a place where children go wanting to enjoy and choose new adventures, we will make a much easier way to make reading one of their hobbies.

Objectives of the school library

UNESCO, in collaboration with IFLA, produced a manifesto for the school library and established a series of objectives that must be met for the promotion of reading and the evolution of the educational process of children.

1. Collaborate with educational projects and teaching programs that the center has.
2. Instill in children a taste for reading and learning, as well as the use of libraries.
3. Motivate the different possibilities offered by school libraries.
4. Regarding values, instill that access to information should be free for all.
5. Collaborate with the other professionals of the center for a better management of the library and the programs and projects of the school, also including the students.
6. Organize activities to show the library’s resources in terms of searching for information and books.
7. Provide access to the necessary resources so that students know the multiple possibilities that exist in different types of libraries.
   

Importance of school library decoration

Children, normally, pay a lot of attention to the details of people, but also of the spaces they often visit. For this reason we must be aware that a school library should be a cheerful and colorful place for them.

Organizing activities in relation to the illustrations of some books can be a good way to decorate the walls of the library and, at the same time, make children feel part of it.

In addition, use colored tables of different sizes for different age groups, as well as the use of display stands so that certain books attract more attention than others.