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Thread: Guard your books!

  1. #1
    Iridium
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    Guard your books!

    Stacks of books are history at Benilde library
    School's aim is to teach students to find information electronically.

    The school library inside Benilde-St. Margaret's junior and senior high is now nearly barren of books.

    Along the back wall, in an area partitioned off as a writing center, novels such as "Anna Karenina" and "Lonesome Dove" sit lonely on a few short bookshelves. Some issues of Time, National Geographic and other magazines are on display by the door.

    But the tall stacks of 5,000 books that towered in the main room last school year are gone. Teachers brought a few into classrooms, but most were donated to schools in Africa. Now the room is filled with tables and chairs where students gather with their school laptops.

    Leaders at the school in St. Louis Park decided against trying to duplicate what area public libraries offer. Instead, they will emphasize teaching the school's 1,200 students to find reliable information electronically. It is among the first schools in the state to take out stacks and transform its library into a digital learning center.

    Schools nationwide are beginning to wrestle with how quickly and how far to step into the world of digital libraries. Collections of printed books seem more and more limited in the face of the vast array of research material and literature online. At the same time, some argue that curling up with a printed book offers needed respite for students distracted by constant social media and the increasingly digital focus of homework time.

    "Sometimes people say, 'Oh, that's so sad you have no books in the library,'" senior high principal Sue Skinner said. "Well, there are books -- they just look different."

    About 20 students sat in small groups at library tables during a recent free period. Some opened textbooks. Many flipped open their MacBook laptops. Students don't have to be silent in the Benilde library anymore; it's OK to speak while working together.

    Senior Kiley Petersen flipped through her "World Religions" text while her friends worked on math. She doesn't miss the stacks, she said.

    "I never really used the actual library before," she said. "It's embarrassing. I'm a senior in high school and never used a book."

    She has used books at other libraries, though: To research school projects, she goes to a public library near her Minnetonka home.
    Junior Will Jarvis said it's faster to use electronics.

    "Apple F," Jarvis said of his search command. "That's crucial. It saves so much time."

    The decision to go digital at Benilde came gradually, Skinner said. While schools nationwide are scaling back their libraries for budget reasons, that wasn't the case at Benilde, a private Catholic school. The staff got rid of many outdated books when the library was moved in 2001. Later, they noticed students weren't using the remaining books. Meanwhile, at national conferences they learned that research was changing.

    Administrators gave teachers first crack at books slated for donation, Skinner said. English teachers were concerned about having fiction books on hand in print, so Skinner had them buy titles to keep in their classrooms.

    Skinner said the library space is still a work in progress, but she thinks of it as a "learning commons." Teachers are there to help with writing and math, and she envisions furnishing it with comfortable chairs and putting student artwork on the walls.

    Mindy Muenzberg, whose son is a junior at Benilde, said she knows the students have great access to books at public libraries, but the nearly bookless room gives her pause.

    "With the age of the Internet, I know things are going to change," she said. "For someone our age, it's kind of startling to see a library without stacks of books."

    Kathy Dillon was involved in the school's parent association last year when the changes were discussed.

    "At first we were all like 'You're doing what?'" she said. But then they saw how the switch would fit the school's needs better, she said. Her daughter was already using county library books when she wrote papers, Dillon said. For pleasure reading, "I think they buy, I think they borrow. ... They kind of pass their books around," she said.

    Social learning

    Schools nationwide are rethinking how to provide students with resources, said Susan Ballard, president of the American Association of School Librarians. It's much easier to forgo physical books if, as at Benilde, each student has a laptop and access to physical books at home or in other places, she and others said.

    A prep school outside of Boston caused a stir when it removed its book stacks three years ago. A few other libraries have since followed suit.
    Some schools have set up more collaborative spaces in their libraries. "This generation of kids ... learning is a social experience for them," Ballard said.

    Nationally, teachers have mixed verdicts on how technology is affecting students' research, a Pew Internet Project survey showed. While electronic access is helpful, teachers are worried that students rely too much on search engines and "think, in effect, that Google equals research," said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet Project.

    Students have difficulty judging the quality of information on search engines, the survey found, making that skill a high teaching priority.
    William Powers, author of "Hamlet's Blackberry," which argues that people need to balance online and offline worlds, said librarians have competing schools of thought on electronic vs. print, with many seeing different values in each.

    Any school that has the budget for both but removes print "is really shortchanging their students," he said. Students gain a lot from sitting down with a printed book, undistracted, he explained: "It's a space apart for the mind."

    Back at Benilde, Petersen said she prefers to read novels and popular titles on paper. That's apparently true for others, too. When sophomores had to choose a book to read over winter break, only two out of nearly 60 chose e-books.

    New responsibilities

    Benilde's librarian, Lynn Bottge, was against e-books until she researched them.

    "It would have been hundreds of thousands of dollars" to maintain stacks of hard-copy books at Benilde, she said. Under a deal available with one distributor, the school would have access to a catalog of about 200,000 scholarly e-books but pay only when they're downloaded. The school subscribes to dozens of databases, which students can access throughout the building or at home with passwords.

    "I think we're in the era now where the library is not in one place," said Bottge, who will retire in January.

    The new librarian will have a lot to teach students about getting good information -- and being good online citizens -- in the digital age, Skinner said: "The role of the librarian, or the library media specialist, has never been more important."




    http://www.startribune.com/local/184...2&c=y#continue
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    Platinum AndreaGail's Avatar
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    Re: Guard your books!

    so in summary they created a large area for kids to play on facebook and concurrently tried to score some brownie points by shipping their unwanted stuff to Africa (never mind the fact that they probably can't read)

    I'm sure the few books they kept though were the cream of the crop...you know, A raisin in the sun, To kill a mockingbird, communist manifesto, etc
    Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months

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    Unobtanium Dogman's Avatar
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    Re: Guard your books!

    The ops story makes me sick, teaching kids to prefer electronic books/info over old school paper.
    "My reading no matter how transient is a dagger in the heart of ignorance."

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    Potmetal Cebu_4_2's Avatar
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    Re: Guard your books!

    Once they limit the interwebs we will be in even more shit.
    Jackie did it and you know it!

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    Unobtanium
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    Re: Guard your books!

    And when the government shuts down the WWW? then what?.....when there is no more power? then what.

    I keep saying that the only way to teach a kid is with paper, pencil, ruler and a compas....well, looks to me that someday it will be that way.....but.....who will the teachers be?.....the same way that the real teaches or our industries will be gone is the same way that real teaches of our schools will be gone......a country of fools will we be.

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    Moderator madfranks's Avatar
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    Re: Guard your books!

    Quote Originally Posted by AndreaGail View Post
    so in summary they created a large area for kids to play on facebook and concurrently tried to score some brownie points by shipping their unwanted stuff to Africa (never mind the fact that they probably can't read)
    You know, those African kids are probably stoked to finally be able to read classics like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn. Between scavenging for bare sustenance and barely surviving another day I'm sure they like to wind down at the end of the day lounging around the hut to read Moby Dick.
    "Liberty is so creative, and the government is so stupid, that I’m very optimistic about the future"
    - Lew Rockwell

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    Palladium drafter's Avatar
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    Re: Guard your books!

    Remember, it's much easier to "revise" electronic books than to reprint paper ones. Makes the Revisionists job so much easier and more affordable.

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    Dangerous Donald Neuro's Avatar
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    Re: Guard your books!

    Quote Originally Posted by drafter View Post
    Remember, it's much easier to "revise" electronic books than to reprint paper ones. Makes the Revisionists job so much easier and more affordable.
    Yes, it is much better to just remove the politically incorrect language in old books, and edit out wrong thinking electronically, instead of having to print new books, and who can be really certain the old book is destroyed. It is better to have it sent to Africa now, under pretext of a cultural donation, and they use it as firewood, instead of doing it later in a book bonfire in the backyard of the school, where some terrrist may decide to take the offensive book home, and corrupt da yoof wid it...

  12. #9
    Unobtanium
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    Re: Guard your books!

    As usual......"They will allowed you to read what they want you to read, and not what you should read"... sounds familiar.
    "If you don't hold it, you don't own it"... Ponce

    "I'll never stop learning because I'll never stop reading"... Ponce

  13. #10
    Moderator madfranks's Avatar
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    Re: Guard your books!

    Quote Originally Posted by drafter View Post
    Remember, it's much easier to "revise" electronic books than to reprint paper ones. Makes the Revisionists job so much easier and more affordable.
    True, but once an electronic file is spread across the 'net, there's no way to get rid of it. It is practically costless to copy and distribute electronic books. If they tampered with or re-wrote something, there would be countless examples of the pre-tampered version available for anyone with an internet connection to pick up.
    "Liberty is so creative, and the government is so stupid, that I’m very optimistic about the future"
    - Lew Rockwell

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