Linking Literacy and Libraries in Global Communities

Marlene Asselin, Ray Doiron

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317104889
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Library & Information Science
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Libraries in today's global world have emerged as key players in building a culture for reading in communities while enhancing the literacy development of children, youth, adults and seniors. Whether one lives in a modern city with sophisticated library services or in a remote region of the world where access to books and literacy services may be limited, librarians and libraries are contributing to the development of learning communities. This book captures some of the essence of this work in libraries in order to inspire and support all those who value the role of libraries in building global communities. The authors highlight the emerging role of libraries and community partners in literacy development and provide concrete examples via case studies drawn from global communities, demonstrating how libraries are working to support local literacies. They also suggest recommendations for supporting the critical role for libraries in supporting global literacies. The book will become essential reading for all those interested in literacy and libraries throughout the world.

CHAPTER 1

LIBRARIES AS FORCES FOR LITERACY AND LEARNING

We begin this first chapter with a visit to a rural community library in Uganda. The Kabubbu Community Library is a strong example of a rapidly increasing new type of library founded on a mission of social change; a commitment to literacy for all members of its community; and provision of access to knowledge to improve health, living standards, gender equity, civic participation, and social justice.

We chose the Kabubbu Community Library in Uganda as the starting point for this exploration of libraries in today’s world because it provides a good example of how libraries in developing countries are working to build a culture for reading while enhancing the literacy and learning opportunities for youth and adults in their community. This rapidly emerging group of libraries is typically part of community-wide development initiatives that place literacy education as key to personal and societal growth and charge libraries with the mission to provide “continuous development of knowledge, personal skills and civic skills and lifelong learning” (Aabo 2005, Yan and Agnes 2009). In this book, we visit several of these new libraries to learn about the various ways they promote reading and how they partner with others to become informational, educational and cultural centers in their communities providing very tangible resources and services while serving a more subtle role in the general uplifting of these communities (Moster 1998).

Through the book, we also visit libraries with more established histories, services and programs, but which are evolving to meet the changing needs and interests of their communities. Although these different types of libraries each face unique challenges, in many ways the goals and aspirations of the staff and the users are universal in supporting literacy and learning.

A VISIT TO THE KABUBBU COMMUNITY LIBRARY, UGANDA PREPARED BY AUGUSTINE PAGI

Kabubbu Community Library is located in central Uganda. It is 25 km north of Kampala in Wakiso district, Kyadondo County, Nangabo Sub County, Kabubbu parish and Kabubbu village Zone B.

Kabubbu village has an estimated 7000 people, mostly large families with eight or more children. The literacy rate has risen to above 60% and people express a strong feeling that literacy can help them fight poverty. The predominant economic activity is subsistence farming propped up with several coping mechanisms like small businesses, casual labor, brick making and using the “boda-boda” (bicycle taxi). Recent land conflicts have escalated between landlords and their tenants.

Status of Basic Literacy Development in Uganda

It is difficult to pass on the importance of reading and learning in Uganda because of a lack of basic required books. In most schools, teachers write notes on the blackboard. Learners copy down the notes into exercise books and go away to study their notes. The notes often have mistakes and the exercise books get torn or lost. Children from villages have overcrowded and underfunded schools. Before the introduction of the thematic curriculum, education beyond the most elementary level used to be done in English, a language which is rarely heard outside the classroom. Though thematic curriculum promotes local languages, there are no resources or trained teachers in rural schools. Local languages are also looked down upon by parents who have low opinion about their own mother tongue. While the majority of children in Uganda come from rural areas, it is only a minority of them who actually get into secondary school. At the same time, both young and old people from rural areas of Uganda have a strong belief in education as the way to better their lives. If they are given the opportunity, they work hard to acquire the necessary knowledge and language proficiency to succeed in education and life.

Staffing Information

Kabubbu Community Library employs three librarians, two of whom are female and nursery teachers. They assist library users to access the books and any information they require. They are also trained in adult literacy facilitation so they run basic adult literacy education programs in the library. All librarians support children learning to read.

Information on the Library

The library is part of the main administration block of Kabubbu Development Project. It is one of the activities of Kabubbu Development Project. This project is a non-governmental organization supported by the Quicken Trust, a United Kingdom-based charity. In order to share local experience and support, the library is a member of the Uganda Community Libraries Association. In the library there is adequate study space for both adult and child users. A rich variety of literacy resources and services are provided. School children as well as community members out of school are served.

Sometimes, however, adult literacy learners feel shy to mix with children; therefore community outreach programs are conducted. The library is just one big hall with shelves, tables, computers and benches. That makes it necessary to create separate sections for computers, reading spaces and reference provision.

Information on the Library Collection

The library has over 7000 books and 2000 magazines. Over 80% of these are in English. Only 20% of the materials are in the library users’ familiar language – Luganda. The books are donations received from United Kingdom which some new readers find hard to relate to. However, the library runs programs tailored to the learning needs, interests and abilities of the community to provide core community development information. Video learning equipment, educational board games and a demonstration garden are examples of library programs. Resources in the collection include textbooks, newspapers, and functional literacy materials, English language fiction and non-fiction and a few learning materials produced by children.

Information on the Library Program

The library service delivery includes individual learning plans and learning reviews based on needs and interests to help both children and adults improve reading and learning. Learners agree on some milestones like keeping records, writing a sentence about what they have read or drawing a picture and naming it. Community events are exploited to market literacy and publicly recognize the learners with certificates of achievements.

Programs for children include interactive literacy activities, where they read a book as a group and act out the characters in the book and also learn the new vocabulary. We also hold conversations about the topics read. The two female librarians hold literacy remedial classes for children in lower primary grades. Teachers report improved concentration and renewed interest in reading when children attend such sessions. Teachers are engaged in professional development workshops to support children’s reading. Parents are invited to a performance by children based on children’s interpretation of what they read from the books.

As part of a big project, Kabubbu Development Project, the library works closely with sister departments. These include the primary school, the secondary school and the health center. Library staff promote family health, rewrite popular articles from newspapers to match the interests and the reading ability of the library users and the community.

In spite of all these efforts, the library still requires new reading materials for both adults and children, primarily to get them interested in reading.

Getting Local Language Materials into Children’s Hands

One of the library’s outstanding achievements was creating a simple children’s picture story book. It is called Essanyu Ly’abato which means the pride of children. Children of primary grades one and two were asked to get stories from adults at home. They came back to relate the stories in the library. They drew pictures to match the stories. The stories were written in a simplified form and learning activities developed to improve children’s literacy skills.

Accomplishments

Through support from the Uganda Community Libraries Association, the library produced a children’s storybook. The book turned out to be the most used book by children and adults alike. The book is so simple with familiar stories that most readers after reading it tell or write a story of their own.

The success of this project is because the content and the language of the stories originated from the users. The flow of the words is so predictable that a reader just follows along logically and in the process connects the print with the spoken word. Any project that seeks to win social approval will succeed because it gets additional support and repeated practice to enhance it.

The community challenges that Kabubbu continue to face are in literacy, health and income generation. However, they can only be addressed through literacy training programs to achieve an everlasting change.

Future Goals and Dreams

What Kabubbu requires is a library where children will find resources to help them with their education and give them a measure of independence. It should offer books for schoolwork and for pleasurable reading and books for new child and adult readers. The library wishes to reach out to the surrounding communities by enhancing the reading culture and providing core community development by providing information in accessible form.

Figures 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3 Kabubbu Community Library, Uganda

Source: Courtesy of Augustine Pagi.

LIBRARY DEVELOPMENT AS A UNIQUE CONTINUUM

To ground our exploration of today’s school and community libraries, we first consider the foundations of the role of libraries in supporting literacy and learning for individuals and communities. In this chapter, we review traditional and emerging perspectives on literacy and learning and in subsequent chapters share real examples of the efforts being made by small libraries on every continent to achieve and strengthen literacy for all. Contemporary concepts of literacy and learning are shaped by the changing world in which we live in which global migration, multilingualism, multiculturalism and differential access to information/knowledge are prevailing realities. These changes present new challenges to libraries in their endeavors to continue their leadership roles in supporting the development of literate cultures and learning communities.

Literacy and Learning in “New Times”

Today, the meaning of literacy has been greatly expanded to incorporate multiple literacies from different communities (Barton and Hamilton 1998), multiple literacies from a breadth of sign systems beyond print-based text (Kress 2003), and new literacies emerging from digital technologies (Cope and Kalantzis 2000, Jenkins 2006, Knobel and Lankshear 2007). In this way, the plurality of literacy “refers to the many ways in which literacy is employed and the many things with which it is associated in a community or society and throughout the life of an individual. People acquire and apply literacy for different purposes in different situations, all of which are shaped by culture, history, language, religion and socio-economic conditions” (UNESCO Education Sector 2004: 13).

In contrast to behaviorist-based notions of learning, constructivist views of learning entail learning as an active, social and lifelong process of problem solving and knowledge creation (Lankes 2011, Lankshear and Knobel 2011). This emerging concept of learning is particularly facilitated by new digital technologies and media. Instead of the past deficit models, contemporary asset approaches to both literacy and learning build upon people’s multiple literacies and diverse ways of knowing as “cultural capital” (Bourdieu 2008) and “funds of knowledge” (Moll et al. 1992). Grounded in notions of the plurality of literacy and learning as knowledge production, today’s libraries are situated in and are defining themselves in what Hall (1996) termed “New Times.” Later in this chapter and throughout the book, we will examine these concepts in more detail and provide real-life examples of library programs responding to the evolving meanings of literacy and learning.

Types of Libraries from Past to Present

The word library derives from the Latin liber (book). The origin of libraries lies in the keeping of written records, a practice that dates at least to the third millennium in Babylonia. The first libraries, which functioned as repositories of books, were those of the Greek temples and those established in conjunction with the Greek schools of philosophy in the fourth century. As people organized the texts they had and developed ways of providing access to them, libraries developed as collections of texts for different groups and for different purposes. For example, reading rooms in monasteries that housed collections of holy manuscripts served priests and scholars in their preservation of religion; private libraries within palaces and temples held important cultural texts for exclusive use by the privileged and educated; and public libraries that arose in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries made available large numbers of books and documents to all members of a community for the purpose of the democratization of knowledge. Most recently, libraries are shifting from information repositories to community-led literacy, learning and cultural centers. In our increasingly complex urban communities, and in communities focused on fighting poverty and improving health and living conditions through education, the library takes on the role of social change agent.

The three main types of libraries today are school, academic and public/community libraries with a fourth category referred to as special libraries, such as medical, corporate and legal libraries. Each of these builds their collection of resources and their programs according to the needs and interests of the individuals and communities they serve. School libraries support students and teachers in subjects related to the curriculum by providing a range of relevant resources and offering programs that help students learn how to find, evaluate and use information. School libraries also promote the habit of reading for individuals and the school community by providing materials with a wide range of topics and genres for users to choose from, and an array of socially engaging activities around books, authors, themes, etc. Academic libraries support the teaching, learning and research activities of higher-level learning institutions through the provision of course-related materials, scholarly journals, and a variety of research services targeted to individuals and classes. Public libraries are unique in their mandate to be available to every member of a community, and their collections represent the broad needs and preferences of their various user groups. Their programs and services are often linked to schools—for example, with resources connected to the curriculum and with support in homework and study skills. Specialized libraries focus on resources and services for highly professional and technical users requiring particular resources for applications in their workplace.

The concept of community libraries stems from a movement for public libraries in the Western world to broaden their services to include marginalized peoples who are typically non-users, such as indigenous peoples, inmates and those with special needs. In post-colonial countries (such as in Africa and South America), many public libraries established under the colonial rule are transitioning to community libraries rather than libraries serving only an elite minority. Additionally, new libraries emerging in rural areas of the developing world are conceived as community libraries “serving the needs of the majority of the people, especially in developing communities where the provision of information services has become crucial” (Moster 1998: 72–73). Community libraries—whether they be evolutions of public libraries or newly formed institutions—“have to be established by the communities themselves” (Stillwell 1989: 267) and “information would have to be appropriate to the needs of particular communities, which implies sustained input from them” (Stillwell 1989: 267). In this book, we focus on school and community libraries.

Given the various roles of libraries and their particular histories, applying universal standards is unrealistic and unworkable. Some assessment tools may be appropriate for similar types of libraries operating within relatively common contexts (Blixrud, 2003, Asselin, Branch and Oberg 2003), but are not generalizable to all of today’s libraries, which are as divergent as the Amsterdam Public Library and the Kabubbu Community Library. Instead, we see individual libraries as living, cultural institutions that are on their own unique growth continuum. A framework for this continuum consists of five dimensions: (a) collection (size, quality, match to user needs); (b) staff (training, number); (c) facilities (size, attractiveness, accessibility); (d) services and programs offered; and (e) information and communication technologies (ICT) (computers, digitized materials, digital media).

This notion of a multifaceted continuum of development is evident in today’s libraries—from small reading rooms in rural and remote communities that are just beginning to establish spaces, resources and programs aimed at creating literate environments, to large and complex urban systems that are transforming their collections and programs in response to the rapidly changing demographics of communities and the proliferation of new ICTs. We feature libraries that serve smaller communities and many have only recently been formed in places where no library had existed before. Each library featured in this book is working within its own unique contexts, while also...