Library love

Here is my beloved school library on the last day of the school year last Friday.

Packed to the rafters - been told many a time it looks just like a bookshop with the latest and greatest in it. (and I still have a couple of thousand to spend from this year.....)

Love it when most things are back .... Still lots out by both students and teachers.... Oh well.

It absolutely guts me when school libraries  are not funded (many schools in NZ get zilch funding for their libraries) and when libraries are full of garbage. I have spent a bit of time this year working with several schools on improving their libraries , weeding for them (throwing out books that are 10 plus years old - no non- fiction in a school should be older than that - ) and helping school principals buy books for their schools. Quite often I think the importance of a library and the job it plays in raising literacy levels of students can be seriously over looked. As for schools that do not even have a library, to me that says a lot about the importance of literacy in a school. National Library books can not do it all. Badger your Board of Trustees in providing a librarian (one that is trained and qualified is even better), providing them with a half decent wage and best of all a decent book budget!