The Importance of School Libraries

Allow me to divulge the significance of school libraries that many are not acquainted with.

The importance of school libraries in a Namibian child’s education cannot be over-emphasised. School libraries are more than just a storage place for books, they have an important role in the support of resource-based learning, promotion of the understanding of media and information literacy as well as promoting a love of reading among pupils. School libraries in Namibia play a significant role in providing information to support national development plans (NDPs), Vision 2030, the national revised curriculum for basic education, and sustainable development goals (SDGs), particularly SDG #4: “To ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning for all”.

Resource-based learning has become a core component to the Namibian education curriculum. Pupils are required to make use of various resources such as books, journals, newspapers, multimedia and the internet as well as people to learn about a particular topic. The school library is the most effective way of providing materials and services for resource-based learning. School libraries’ support for resource-based learning goes far beyond the provision of resources as it plays a major role in the development of resource-based programmes that are necessary to achieve the goals that underlie the school curriculum. Resource-based learning is one of the requirements of acquiring information literacy.

School librarians collaborate with teachers, through which pupils acquire the knowledge of how to retrieve, evaluate, organise, share and apply information objectively, critically and independently. The school library equips pupils to be information literate for life-long learning. School libraries invest these skills in pupils to ensure that learning does not end with the completion of secondary education, but continues throughout their life.

In today’s era, information literacy is a crucial skill for every citizen in order to flourish in an information-rich environment.

As much as there is Google to help pupils retrieve information from the internet, it is a challenge for them to differentiate bad sources from good ones. Librarians provide guidance for searching online as well as provide access to databases and indexes that can grasp the areas that a surface Google search cannot reach. In the school library, pupils are equipped with skills on how to search properly in the ocean of information, as well as how to evaluate the value of the information’s source. A strong information literacy foundation at an early age is essential for life-long learning. Without a school library, pupils are unable to learn the foundations they need to become information literate.

When pupils are provided with the opportunity to use school libraries to access and explore information that matters to them, different forms of literacy and numeracy develop. Several studies indicate that school libraries can have a positive impact on a pupils’ achievement as more reading occurs when there is a library, leading to an enhancement of their performance in reading comprehension.

It is a well-known fact that Namibia has high rate of reading difficulty among pupils. School libraries are therefore one of the solutions to this problem as they are the centre of reading promotion in a school. A library has the power to stimulate literacy in pupils of different ages. School libraries are valuable, especially to those who are from disadvantaged backgrounds with no access to books and relevant resources to aid their academic progress, let alone access to public libraries.

School libraries are taking over the role of serving as information gateways at the centre of learning establishments, hence they should be regarded as key sites for the development of information literacy. They have the potential to become the hub of classroom learning by extending information tools and attending to pupils’ daily information needs. The absence of a school library with an active library staff has consequences far beyond the classroom, as this will deprive pupils the opportunities to develop information literacy skills. As a result, pupils face serious challenges when they enter institutions of higher education or the workforce. All schools with library facilities need to ensure that their libraries are optimally used and that pupils have access to resources.

Esther Tobias is the chief librarian at the Education Library Service at the

Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture.

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