One of the biggest complaints about the “new” public education system is that it is so focused on tests — the taking of tests, the preparation for tests, the results of the tests, the modifications to the curriculum based on the tests, and the funding dependent on the tests — that the experience of formal classroom learning has been whittled down the absolute necessities. Home Ec, shop classes, all the arts programs — they’re always in danger of losing their funding or already have to such an extent that they seem like a relic of a bygone era. The library is the perfect place to fill that gap, to continue all of those educational, necessary, and enjoyable experiences.
This crossed my feed after I posted this entry, but it fits
To facilitate this, as a society, we have to get away from the idea that “play” is a waste of money. Talking about makerspaces with a friend who works in tech, he said, “There’s a reason why the first coding experience is always with games.” You start with things that are small and inconsequential. In using a 3-D printer for the first time, you design a toy, not a prosthesis. That doesn’t make the toy a waste of supplies; it makes it the first step to a much longer path. I want to take a LinkedIn Learning class this summer to finally learn Adobe Photoshop, not so I can becomes some impressive graphics designer, but so I can tweak personal photos. This is real life. These are the experiences that people show up for. We support self-education through books; why would we not extend that to learning together especially when–in this constantly changing technological landscape–books about that topic might not exist.
And it doesn’t have to be practical. Let’s have dinosaur classes, bug classes, American Girl club – whatever people are checking out or want to learn about. Do you know how excited I would have been as a kid if my library had had a Santa Lucia Christmas party based on the Kirsten books? Teach me about the holiday. Let’s make festive Swedish foods. Let’s learn to cook new things that we may never have tried before and learn about cultures different from our own.
This has crossed my feed repeatedly recently, and almost without fail, the first comment is something about “Because we don’t wanna be shushed.” Maybe we just need to stop calling them libraries. Maybe the community center is just also where the free media to check out lives, like a really big free Redbox. If the library has “become the help desk for the community,” then maybe that’s how it needs to be branded for future generations (Kenney, 2015). Let the “shush” generation die out with us, so that the kids of today only know the “community center” as a place where learning is fun and everything interesting happens.
Relating back to Michael’s lecture about the NY virtual map, there’s a Facebook group that features tours of Gilded Age mansions and stories of the socialites, relating them back to the Julian Fellowes’s series on HBO. By all means, let’s curate all the stuff we can collect about the era–the books, the maps, the podcasts, the tv series, the movies–and create LibGuide-style pathfinders for our patrons (Stephens, 2017). “Obsessed with this? Here, take this. Also? Come on Monday night, and we’ll talk about yesterday’s episode while drinking tea and watching a recording of the actor who plays Mrs. Astor sing on Broadway. Can’t make it? Check out the group website, connected to the main library page and be ready for next week.” As Mathews (2013) stated, “Sometimes those spaces are virtual.” We talk a big game about using technology, but (at least my) library websites are places to access the catalogue or find out about services; rarely are they learning hubs themselves.
But they could be…
Other thoughts:
“We have the ability to connect people…” (Nygren, 2014). Building on the idea of the living books repository, what if we also had lists of community resources that the library could call on? Not just “I know a guy” when planning a new endeavor, but actively proposition our communities to let us know what they have to offer the world. Maybe we don’t need it now, but someday… For instance, if you wanna know about planning a European backpacking trip, I am your man. There’s no reason anyone in my town would know that, would not know to call on me if the need arose, but if they said, “What could you do a 10-minute talk on without preparation?” You betcha. Using those resources would strengthen community ties that are increasingly difficult to build. I can attest that it is absolutely possible in this day and age to live in direct proximity to people you’ve never met and have no reason to meet. That number goes up exponentially if you don’t have children or dogs.
I don’t work in a library, so my knowledge of the “why” is limited, but is there a reason why we would be wedded to the idea of keeping all library services under one roof, other than the ability to encourage cross-pollination? For instance, looking at the “Sensory Storytime” article, if there wasn’t space to include it in the branch, would it be so bad to lease a storefront on Main Street?
References
Administrator. (2020, February 17). Check out Marsden Library’s sensory space. Public Libraries Connect. https://plconnect.slq.qld.gov.au/blog/check-out-marsden-librarys-sensory-space
Kenney, B. (2015, September 11). Where reference fits in the modern library. Publisher’s Weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/libraries/article/68019-for-future-reference.html
Mathews, B. (2013). Curating learning experiences: A future role for librarians? The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/blognetwork/theubiquitouslibrarian/2013/09/05/curating-learning-experiences-a-future-role-for-librarians/
Nygren, A. (2014). The public library as a community hub for connected learning. IFLA 2014 Lyon. https://library.ifla.org/id/eprint/1014/1/167-nygren-en.pdf
Stephens, M. (2014, November 26). YLibrary?: Making the case for the library as space for infinite learning. State Library of Queensland YLibrary Project. https://www.dropbox.com/s/p46kkmbkvwpdsng/YLibraryInfiniteLearning.pdf?dl=0
Stephens, M. (2017, May 15). Office hours: Gifts of this hour. Library Journal. https://287.hyperlib.sjsu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/GiftsofthisHour.pdf
I think the library is a valuable part of the modern world since you can learn all sorts of new things and you are right it’s a safe place people can learn what they wouldn’t in school. However I don’t believe we should offload so much of our work towards the library, instead we need to push for schools to be a better educational setting too. It shouldn’t always be at risk to lose creative learning environments. Play is an important part of learning as you say, so it needs to remain in schools to a certain degree. I’ve never learned that well if I didn’t have fun, but this comes in many different ways. I just don’t think we should give up on schools having fun.
@jeanna so much goodness here, but I’m gonna focus in on the last little bit about library services under one roof. My thought would be to expand the library into that storefront and anywhere else. The library might find some space such as the farmers market or the community center or anything in between. This is a good way to think about service and the library’s place in the community.