Are You Using Your Library?
When Abraham Lincoln struggled to teach himself, walked miles to borrow a book from a neighbor. Our libraries are the great equalizers. Now, most Americans can go to their nearest library branch. They can often also check out music, audiobooks, and movies. Computers for Internet access are most likely available too, along with cultural programs.
In this age of the Internet, this may not seem that critical. It is more so. Our children are going to be bombarded with information - good, bad, indifferent, and completely wrong - their entire lives. Developing good library skills will help them learn to sift information to gather what they really need.
A library can be a haven. As I grew up in a home where family implosions bubbled as frequently as Old Faithful, the library was a place where I could find books. Though I could not control my parents, where we lived, where we moved, or what disaster they dragged us to next, I could escape among the pages of books and discover friends. Those books gave me structure and were sometimes the most normal part of my world. It didn't matter whether it were a small town library with the single librarian who knew all my family calamities & shared them with other patrons behind my back or whether it were the big city library where I was nothing but a child with a card.
Their books saved me and kept me sane.
A summer library job in college was the most valuable one I held. I worked in the card catalog department - the most valuable part. We typed cards for the real card catalog. Each book required 3 cards for the catalogs plus one for the book. Then the cards were filed. How was an obsolete job so helpful to me now?
When we typed subject cards, we typed the Library of Congress subject headings on them. That taught me how information was organized. I use those topics when I search the Internet and can find information in half the time of other people.
Library skills help kids for a lifetime. They won't read every book in the library but will choose what they need. The same skill transfers to the Internet.
What types of library research skills do kids need to know?
-sources of information - what each one is, including the dictionary, almanac, encyclopedia, thesaurus, phone books, and atlas.
-how to look up information in those books. For example, last name first, first name last, subject areas.
-types of books in the library - fiction, non-fiction, reference, biographies
-the Dewey Decimal system
-online library catalogs - how to find books they want
-how to read the information on the title page of a book, including those Library of Congress headings
-how to discern good websites from bad ones
-how to use an Internet search engine. A little Boolean logic saves a lot of time.
The best way to teach those library skills is to force kids to use them. Tell kids to get the encyclopedia with information on a subject. Have scavenger hunts where kids have to find information for themselves. Take topics from their other school subjects and require them to find information on those topics in the library.
The best way to teach kids to use the library is to take them early and often. Befriend your children's librarians. They can help you help your children.
A decade ago, my favorite children's librarian found finger plays for me that used the same sounds as my son's speech therapists were targeting. That same librarian held magnificent story hours. When my son was three years old and working in speech therapy four days weekly and music therapy one day weekly, I took him to two of her story hours weekly because he liked her and responded well to them. At the time, he could not talk. Years later,she had him read the Declaration of Independence aloud at her 4th of July story hour parties. Only she and I knew the great strides he had made and what a miracle his reading that aloud was.
Research shows that kids who go to the library and participate in their youth programs have higher rates of literacy. They read earlier, and they read more. Further, they are better readers; they read more carefully and remember what they've read. Those are skills for a lifetime.
As a homeschooling family, our library card has provided us with countless benefits. When we require our children to read a different classic novel every month, we've used the library to check them out. We've also checked out the Cliffs Notes for the same books from the library.
My children's library experiences are different from my own. Instead of the library serving as a haven from my family, it is a haven we enjoy as a family. We are blessed to live in a city with several wonderful branches, and our family has been friends with children's librarians in many excellent libraries.
As Cicero once said, "If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need."
Copyright 2009. All rights reserved. Permission granted to forward in its entirety.
Originally published November 06, 2009.
