In This Issue | School Libraries

Soon after taking on the principalship at Seattle's Hawthorne Elementary many years ago, Ben Canada made a troubling discovery: Stacked in a far corner of the school library were boxes and boxes of never-opened books. Canada confronted the elderly librarian.

This may have been a quirk—the aberrant behavior of one ultra-fastidious old woman from an earlier age. But it's not an isolated case. Just the other day, one of my younger colleagues was talking about her school library experience. "I seem to remember the librarian scolding kids for actually touching the books," she said with an ironic laugh. Another co-worker chuckled mirthlessly as she described her school librarian sitting at her desk, munching cookies while doing her personal reading. Whenever she had to (grudgingly) attend to children's needs, she would stick an Oreo between the pages to mark her place.

These are the horror stories of school libraries—the cautionary tales about what happens when schools staff their libraries with the wrong people. But when the right people run school libraries, the stories are of a very different sort. When committed professionals like Tiki Levinson of Bristol Bay, Alaska, or Marianne Hunter of Lacey, Washington, are in charge, the shelves of books and banks of computers morph into living, pulsing places—places that can become the very heartbeat of a school.

That's the way I think of my childhood library at Seattle's Lake Forest Park School. In an earlier issue of this magazine, I reminisced about the warm, welcoming place where I checked out my first chapter book and—under the tutelage of a qualified and caring librarian—learned to use reference materials: "The humble little school library, I began to see, was a ramp to everything in the world and beyond, everything that could be dreamed and imagined, everything that could be known, everything that could be hoped."

If that was true back in the 1950s, it is infinitely truer today. The title of this issue, "Nexus of Knowledge," suggests the literal links that 21st century libraries have with every center of learning across the earth. But it refers more precisely to the women and men who commit themselves to connecting kids to the vast planetary network—and, at least as important, guiding them toward a lifetime love of reading.

In these pages you will read about the people whose training in librarianship, along with their vast experience and deep dedication, are making school libraries not only sources of information but also of inspiration, imagination, and motivation. The research is clear: Strong school library programs bolster achievement. Outstanding library professionals across the Northwest are working tirelessly to help teachers improve curriculum delivery and to help students reach district, state, and national standards.

In the current economic slump, when administrators and school boards are desperately seeking programs to cut, libraries might appear, at first glance, to be expendable "extras." But the stories in these pages offer a second look at the meaning and value of school libraries. For countless kids and teachers, cutting the school library program is a mortal blow to the school's vitality.