What a wonderful article by Frank Cottrell Boyce (author of Millions, Framed, Cosmic - all great funny wonderful novels - would be good read-alouds) reprinted in the latest SCIS Connections newsletter : Are schools killing off the library ?
http://www2.curriculum.edu.au/scis/connections/are_schools_killing_off_the_library.html
In this paean to libraries, Frank Cottrell Boyce talks about the importance of reading for pleasure and makes a plea to avoid changing libraries into "Learning Resource Centres" full of computers.
He ends : "The year I won the Carnegie, my MP was among the first to congratulate me. Part of the prize was a bequest to a library of my choosing. I was thinking about my local library. She said no. She told me that Waterloo – the Liverpool suburb – was twinned with Waterloo in Sierra Leone – a small African town devastated by the civil war. She had just met the local mayor and had asked him what she could do for him, thinking he would ask for a health centre, a school or cash. He said, ‘What we’d really like is a library.’ So often when people ask for help, they ask for the worst of us. They ask for weapons or dodgy large-scale engineering projects. This man asked for the best of us. And where is the best of us? It’s in the library."
Check out this article, and have a look at the whole Connections issue - lots of useful and interesting information - websites, Twitter, table arrangements in libraries, web filtering...
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