Minister of Education and National Culture meets Teacher-Librarians

The Hon. Minister of Education and National Culture met fifty-one teacher-librarians from state schools at the Despott Hall, Floriana on Tuesday 17 February. The meeting was held so that the Minister could hear, at first hand, about the problems encountered by school librarians in their day to day work. Present for this meeting, were the Director General, Education Division, Mr. Frederick Fearne and Mr. Joseph Boffa.

The Minister welcomed all those who had accepted his invitation for this meeting and started by thanking Mr. Joseph Boffa for the report on School / Branch Libraries and the encouragement of reading which had been commissioned and submitted in January of this year. A resume of this report will be released to the press soon.

The Minister spoke briefly of the salient points of the problems facing libraries, like the declining number of books per student (which fell to 5 per head in 1996). The ageing book stock of libraries was touched upon. Most schools have less than 20% (and many only 5%) of their books published within the last 10 years. There has obviously been neglect and lack of funds but the biggest blow must have been the demise of the Schools Library Service. The supply of furniture and equipment has lagged behind and according to the above mentioned report, among other things, some 400 shelving units and 688 library chairs are needed for school libraries alone. Branch libraries are not covered by these figures.

Comments from the participants were very forthcoming. Basically they centered on six main points:

1. Funds for books and other library materials. There was tacit agreement that the previous system whereby centralized funding, ordering and processing was available was much better than the present system of every library for itself. Librarians missed the catalogues of new books that used to be produced by the Schools Library Service. The purchase of periodicals (down to 55 in 1996 from 250 in 1994) was mentioned.

2. Recruitment and training of teacher-librarians brought out various suggestions of in-service courses, visits to overseas libraries and the value of the Diploma in Library and Information Studies.

3. Adequate premises were not always available. Each school had its individual problems.

4. Books get damaged and repairs at an early stage will increase their useful life. Some teacher-librarians bemoaned that the Schools Library Service was no longer able to do this work.

5. Teaching the use of the library was seen as crucial in developing not only the reading habit but also the path to better use of libraries. This is why standardization is important. The same book in each library must have the same classification number. As matters stand most schools are not classifying or cataloguing their books. Libraries are becoming rooms full of books!

6. Teacher-librarians spend too much time dealing with textbooks. Time would be better spent in helping students and organizing book-related activities.

The meeting was brought to a close with the nomination of a number of teacher-librarians to form an action committee to look at the proposals made at this meeting and in the School / Branch Libraries report. The committee to be chaired by Mr. Joseph Boffa will report to the Minister of Education and National Culture.