What Japanese School libraries could learn from US

The library (I won't call it a media center) in Japanese schools serves a different role than the library in U.S. schools. I hate to make a value judgment, but I think my graduate school professors would not be pleased with the school libraries in Japan. (If you want to learn more about how much a good library can influence achievement and improve test scores, google "Keith Curry Lance." He's a hero to public school librarians because he's done more research than anyone else documenting quantitative statistical increases in test scores correlating with library presence. A good library really makes a measurable difference.)

When I shared photos of the Saint Stephen's Library, which is beautiful, students and teachers alike gasped and covered their mouths. "It's so big!?" Each (elementary, junior, and senior high) library had one computer (which was located behind the circulation desk. The elementary library had a card catalog, the wooden organization system that's obsolete in the U.S. In the two others it was online. I tried to understand how students searched for books, and I was shown a binder with bar codes. It's my understanding that either the teacher tells the student which book she needs, or the student goes to the librarian with a general description. In the second case, the librarian looks it up and retrieves it for her.

In the elementary school students are welcome to visit the library and check out books between classes. They do this on their own. In the junior and senior high schools, students can either come on their own time, or teachers can sign up to bring entire classes. From what I understand in talking with the librarians, teachers lead their own classes in the libraries. I couldn't find a polite way to ask what their precise duties were. Most distressing to me was the response of the high school principle when a colleague of mine asked about the Internet. He said that almost all the students have the Internet at home and know how to use it for research. Really!? Most of you know that information literacy is a pet cause of mine. I DO NOT believe that the ability to research on the Internet translates to any skill in doing so. We don't expect our students to be able to read simply because they have books in the home. There is so much information on the web, sometimes I, as an information specialist, have trouble sifting through mounds of information to actually find what best meets my needs. I also know that, as the participatory web explodes in popularity, a lower percentage of information on the web will be credible. You're all trusting me to be honest in my descriptions of the trip. If I wrote, "The librarians work collaboratively with the teachers, and all students must pass an information literacy exam before leaving junior high," you'd believe it. It isn't true, but no one's stopping me from writing it, and most likely none of you would have the background or inclination to verify if it was true or false. (Perhaps I'm hiding out in the little yellow house for three weeks and making this up as I go along. If I didn't have photos, you wouldn't have proof. And I've already told you that photos can be copied and altered . . .)

Since I am in Japan, I had a long conversation with a junior high school librarian. (It was a first time experience to have an important, in depth, "one on one" conversation using a translator. You pay so much more attention to facial cues and gestures and still talk face to face. The translator really becomes a medium, not an intrusion.) She wants to visit the U.S., and I want to host her, so that she can learn about the potential for school libraries! When I gave her the Saint Stephen's pens, she said, "I have something for you to." Then she ran to her back office and rummaged through some boxes and pulled out a used picture book and gave it to me. It's awesome. It's a story about ancestor respect and Okinawan culture.She also had her "library committee" make everyone in our group cranes and calligraphy signs. She started this group because she used to have to clean the library all alone. (Remember, students do all the cleaning.) Now 18 to 20 volunteers come before and after school to clean, reshelve books, and sometimes read to other students. (I am super-pleased with my parent volunteer, Francis Bermudez, and want to thank her publicly. If any students want to start a library committee to help with library maintenance, let me know.) One thing, literacy but not library related - I love elementary school students being read to before school (but not in place of library class, like in Japan). The senior high school students have mandatory fun reading time before school. Students can bring in their own books or take one from the bookshelves on each floor. Manga is not allowed.

*In fact, Japanese schools are rather anti-manga. They don't think it is educational, and they view them as picture books, sometimes with innapropriate material. On the other hand, schools in the U.S. are rushing to embrace manga in libraries (albeit cleaner manga).(Muggles are allowed in the high school library.) :)
(If only this library pencil sharpener could meet the vampire stapler...)