1 school 1 library 1 librarian

Last night I went to a talk by Zackie Achmadt about access to education in the New South Africa. It was very good, I left really inspired! The work they are doing is so great. He has moved away from TAC, handing it over to the next generation of leaders. He is now involved in an organisation called Equal Education, which seems to be an activist organisation that fights for education in a similar way that TAC fought for HIV/AIDS related issues.

One of the Equal Education projects is called "1 school 1 library 1 librarian" - they are campaigning for school libraries. IOL reports that "There are functional libraries at only four of Khayelitsha's 53 public schools serving 57 000 pupils" (here).

I have mixed feelings about the need for school libraries myself. I don't think they are a bad thing, I just think that community libraries are perhaps a better use of resources. I suppose there is something to be said on either side. Myself, I never really used the school library. But I went to our local suburb library probably at least once a week for much of my childhood.

I remember graduating from having a children's library card to having an adult's library card. Children's cards only let you take books from the children's section, but adult cards cold take out any books. It felt like quite a big transition in my life!

I think the benefit of community libraries is that they can serve a wider group of people, so they can be bigger, they can have more specialised library staff, they can run fun reading events for kids, they can have a wider range of reading material, etc. I think putting specialised libraries in schools just limits access of those books to kids at one particular school, and duplicates the effort of running a library.

That said though, I grew up in a reading family with a librarian mother. So using the library has been the norm since as far back as I can remember. Perhaps for kids who grow up in families that don't use libraries, perhaps having a school library that they are encouraged to use will help form the habit of reading. Where maybe they would not have been exposed to larger community libraries.

But still, I favour community libraries. If they are running well, if they advertise. If they have good staff. They can even run projects in conjuction with local schools.

What do other people think?

What I really REALLY am in favour of though, is mobile libraries! Our local library was being rebuilt at one stage, so every Wednesday the mobile library used to come park in the parking lot of the shops a few block away from us. So on Wednesday afternoons we used to go get books from the bibliobus!

It was really just a minibus, with the walls lines with shelves of books. The books would rotate from a central library, so their used to be a different selection every week.

I think mobile libraries are brilliant because they give *everyone* access to books - they can rotate through different areas of a city, and also go to small towns and rural areas.

I googled to look for mobile libraries running in SA at the moment and I found some projects:
* The Mobile Library Education Project in Khayalitsha.
* A mobile library project in the Free State (followup info here).
* Mobile libraries in Limpopo.
* Donkey drawn mobile libraries?
* Even the ANC commends the use of mobile libraries!
* And I know I shouldn't laugh, but this is kindof funny: Please help us find our stolen mobile libraries.
* Finally, some general info on SA libraries.

The Bua article above says that "About 21 mobile libraries are currently visiting 380 schools in four provinces, Free State, Western Cape, Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal on a daily basis."
21 doesn't sound like a lot! Better than nothing though, I suppose. Perhaps the mobile libraries need a "5 schools 1 mobile library 1 librarian" project!


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