Mar 9, 2024 3 min read

If you’re old enough and took a language arts class in junior high or high school, you probably remember learning about the particulars of a library card catalog and the finer points of the Dewey Decimal System.

Even for kids who loved reading and libraries it was, let’s be honest, pretty boring stuff, and few tears were shed when those hulking catalogs were replaced by easy-to-navigate computers, where you could simply type in the name of an author or a title and you were off to the races.

Libraries are not static institutions because the communities they serve are not static; new information, new technology and new ideas are changing them all the time, and that goes for both public libraries and libraries that are within school buildings. A story by Katherine Mansfield that appeared in the Observer-Reporter illustrates just how school libraries are moving in new directions.

Though much attention has lately been focused on what students can and cannot have access to in school libraries, the ways in which those libraries are evolving is also worthy of notice. Rather than being a repository of books and select magazines and a place where kids can hang out for study hall, libraries are now being transformed into “digital media centers.” Mansfield’s story detailed how they now are equipped with things like flat-screen TVs, stock market tickers, maker spaces, even exercise bikes, treadmills and a “chill zone.” It’s all part of an effort to make the libraries more like college-style student halls than the libraries of old.

Cassie Menhart, the librarian and media specialist with the Carmichaels Area Junior/Senior High School, explained it this way: “If the library doesn’t evolve with the, I don’t know if it’s the wants or needs of the students, but I think that’s why libraries have shut down. They’re not offering something, or enough, to keep the whole school interested. We almost have something for everyone in here.”

Menhart brought up the reality that some schools have decided to do away with their libraries, mostly citing the costs of having a librarian or media specialist on staff. School libraries have closed in urban districts in Los Angeles and Houston, Texas, and as close by as McKeesport. Sometimes, the argument is made that students have a world of information at hand with a laptop, but libraries serve an important function as being places where students can come together, collaborate and maybe even browse through a shelf of books and find something that fires their intellect and imagination.

And what about the books that once held pride of place in school libraries? They are still there, according to Dr. Andrew Oberg, the superintendent of the McGuffey School District. He explained, “Our plan as we move forward isn’t necessarily to do away with books. We want to look at the books from the standpoint of how have they been used? We start to see some books haven’t been checked out since the 1980s. It’s time to pull them.”

It’s hard to argue that a book that hasn’t been touched since the Reagan administration is probably taking up space that could be used for other things. But let’s hope that as school libraries grow and change, that there is still a place for the books that have long been at their center, and the joy that comes from reading them.