ETL 503 - The school library collection in a post-literate world

Am I the only one terrified by the suggestion that "the ability to read words, is no longer necessary"?  With a new age of information literacy is upon us, there has been a dramatic decline in the value placed upon the written word.  The internet and other digital mediums has meant that the printed book no longer holds the same weight that it did is years gone by.  Students are now seemingly able to unlock knowledge at the clock of a mouse button, yet they have ironically lost the ability to decode and evaluate the information to extract the answers that the are looking for.  How exactly have we got to this point?

Traditional library collections are becoming obsolete and the digital world allows us to share our resources more efficiently and effectively.  Understandably the economic savings that this achieves means that this medium is the way of the future, but does that mean that we simply turn our backs on the past?  Perhaps some will simply dismiss me as being out of touch, but the feel of an actual book in my hands (and the joy that it brings) is a feeling that no digital text  can possibly achieve.  The promise of a gripping read as I tentatively turn that first page cannot be matched by the iBook equivalent experience.  There is a certain personal attachment that I have to my books; my childhood favorites still line the shelves of my bookcase and I'm excited by the prospect of being able to share them with my daughter ... I can't wait to alight her imagination.  My personal collection of books seem to mark the journey of who I am and how I got to be here; they are a reflection of me ... my interests, loves, dreams, fears and hopes.  I can't even consider parting with them.

I never really considered how a school library collection, or any library collection for that matter, reflects the community that it represents.  The librarians obviously take time to consider how each acquisition will add value to the overall collection and what it might offer to individuals, yet it seems strange that the role of the library is so often undervalued by the school.  As the leaders of the school, principals must invest the necessary time, energy and funds to not only maintain the current status of their library collections, but to enable it to develop further.  The school library represents the central nervous system of the learning community, without it surely the remaining organs will not have the sustenance to thrive.