The Case for Maintaining and Supporting School Libraries

by Dr. Don A. Klinger, Queen’s University and Kathryn Blackett, People for Education.

Two recent major studies have examined the conditions in Canada’s school libraries: Ken Haycock’s The Crisis in Canada’s School Libraries (2003) and Canadian School Libraries and Teacher-Librarians by David Coish (2005). Both show ample evidence that after nearly two decades of federal and provincial cuts to education funding, libraries once seen as integral to schools, have come to be considered increasingly peripheral and susceptible to funding cuts.

Currently, school libraries in most provinces are showing deteriorating collections and declining levels of  staffing (British Columbia Teacher- Librarians’ Association, 2005; Learning Resources Council, 2005; Literacy Coalition of New Brunswick, 2005). Many school libraries are now staffed by parent volunteers or students and are closed for long periods of the day or whole days of the week (Haycock, 2003). All of these symptoms are visible in Ontario, which experienced significant cuts to education funding in the 1990s.