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Friday, January 28, 2011

Libraries are community indicators

"The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons."
- Fyodor Dostoevsky

I respectfully disagree with Dostoevsky on this one.  I can understand where he's coming from that how we treat our criminals is the measure of how civil we are as a complete society.  But from a community-level perspective, I'd have to modify his quote to look closely at the libraries rather than the prisons.

This part of the Bronx has a library within walking distance from our school, but I can't help but wonder how often our students use these community resources.

The purpose of a library is to archive and to enable/allow for public access to any and all forms of information.  When you enter a community that has a stripped down library as their access point you must wonder what the level of educational attainment is for the surrounding area.  If the library has out-dated resources or little to no resources to provide it's neighboring populace then what sorts of inquiry into research could this community possibly conduct?

Though we have entered the age of the internet and accessibility, there are bound to be pockets of communities that do not rely on the internet and rely on the local libraries as their window to the rest of the world.

Also the utilization of these facilities also raises the question of how well-grounded we are as communities in conducting sound research on topics that really matter to us.

If students simply turn to Google or Wikipedia for their questions without first turning to their textbooks for answers then what sort of literary skills or primary source research can these students conduct in the future?  Heaven forbid you ask a student today to write a bibliography that abides by MLA or APA formats with embedded citations rather than submit a list of URL's as their sources.

If you truly want an idea of how seriously a community treats their education, the local libraries are the most authentic indicators here.

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