Lifelong Libraries for Lifelong Learning

Ray Doiron, Ph.D.
Faculty of Education
University of Prince Edward Island

Introduction
Information Skills
Continuum of Libraries
 

Introduction
One of the benefits of sitting on the Executive as President of the Canadian School Library Association (CSLA) has been the opportunity to work with other library professionals who represent the academic and public libraries, library trustees and various special libraries. It has been an opportunity to see how many of our areas of concern are quite similar and to learn that our common issues arise from the same problems within society. Further, it has really emphasized for me the role that the Canadian Library Association (CLA) plays in tying these various library communities together and uniting our voice for better library programs and services across Canada.

One of the common issues that we all face is how does each library community support the goals of lifelong learning and information literacy, two major concepts which pervade all of the social, political and economic policy documents produced today by corporate and government agencies. When these two concepts are combined with the influence new information technologies are having on how we work, then the need for collaboration among the various library communities is more urgent than ever. This point was brought home to me last spring when a colleague and I were invited to speak to the members of the Professional Librarians’ Association of New Brunswick. They wanted someone from the school library community to speak to their members and help them deal with what they perceived as a major problem facing public libraries - What can we do about the students who arrive out of school without adequate preparation to handle information and often its accompanying technologies. What could we be doing in public libraries to help?
 
Well, my immediate comment was to say that obviously I would have to talk to their members about school librarianship and about how we are attempting to develop effective school library programs built around the concept of information literacy, which we do using resource-based learning. This seemed to suit what the organizers wanted since they felt members of their association knew little about what goes on in school libraries. This became then the catalyst for sharing with them the need for all library communities to learn more about their colleagues in other libraries and to reinforce for everyone the notion that what happens in one library community affects what happens in another.

The presentation was an eye-opener for the mixed audience of school and public librarians and library technicians who were quick to recognize that the support one library community gets (or doesn’t get) impacts on the status of libraries in the other communities. We came to understand at that session that as a wider, embracing library community, we need to forge stronger links and work together within a framework built around the idea that there is a necessity for a continuum of library programs to emerge that will be supported equally across society and that will help develop information literacy and prepare all Canadian citizens to be lifelong learners. But one session does not bring about any great change. It may bring some awareness and some general discussion, but it takes a broader and more pervasive effort by all library professionals working together for the good of all. It takes an integrated and collaborative initiative by different groups working together — groups within the school system such as teacher-librarians and technology advocates, as well as groups with vested interest in what the schools do, such as professional library organizations, tertiary institutions and private sector interests who work to provide services to people who have basic problem-solving skills and the technological competence to function in the world today.

For those of us in specific library communities and also part of the CLA family, it takes a wider and connected vision for libraries and the various ways they are needed across our lives. It requires that decision- and policy-makers recognize that libraries of all sorts are a vital and pervasive factor in the success of all learners and since we are lifelong learners, we need lifelong libraries.

Information Skills
It is not difficult for us as library professionals to list the myriad of information skills needed by learners today nor to think of all the critical thinking strategies they need to apply to meet their information needs. Learners need to access, locate, organize, process and produce information and more and more they use advanced information technologies to do that work. In the school library community, we battle the temptation to provide learners with the physical access to information by showing them how to do a catalogue search or an Internet search and then help them retrieve the resources. What we often fail to do is to help them with the skills to intellectually access the resources so they can be evaluators of information, critics of that information, as well as good processors and synthesizers of information. We know they need teachers and teacher-librarians to teach these things. In other types of libraries, this can also be the situation - - - we focus on providing physical access but not intellectual access. With so much information out there and so much demand for the new technologies, all librarians are finding themselves more an dmore in an educational role.

When we look at the problems these young adults have without the information literacy skills they need for the new millennium, I am reminded of a story Patricia Schuman told in one of her presentations.

It is story told about the writer Oscar Wilde who was asked about the opening night of one of his new plays. He is reported to have said:

“The play was a great success, but the audience was a failure.”

It seems to me we have done almost the same thing by creating this wonderful network of resources and information technology that we can all say is a great success, but the people expected to use it are failing.

Well it is not them who is failing;
it is we educators who continue to push the system for more and more access to information and yet we don’t provide the students with instruction in how to make effective use of the resources.

We think we can provide physical access with the latest in IT and a technician to keep it all working. But what about intellectual access and teaching young people to make critical choices, to pick what information is relevant to their need, current, accurate and authoritative. We have more information, it is true, but we also have more misinformation and even disinformation. It is what Richard Wurmen calls “a non-information explosion.”  In fact, all we really have is “access to excess”; just because we have more information does not mean we have better knowledge nor does it mean that because we have access to more information we are any better at making effective use of that information.

Continuum of Libraries
I feel what we have need for is a continuum of libraries; a lifelong vision for library services and library programs that will continue the library’s traditional role of organizating and storing information, providing access to that information, but also helping users make informed decisions, be information problem-solvers and generally make effective use of the information. This continuum of libraries is conceptualized as a support to lifelong learning with lifelong libraries.

There are different uses we make of libraries at different times in our lives and we have different needs at any one point in our lives. It’s a dynamic model that connects separate library communities and creates a comprehensive plan for information storage, information access, information retrieval and most importantly information literacy.

Table 1 below summarizes the various needs for different types of libraries throughout our lives. I realize it is a simple summary, but I think it does show how libraries fulfil different roles at different times in our lives and how we rely on libraries for a wide range of information needs and independent reading. What I hope it shows to those of us active in various library communities is how we are linked in a continuous and pervasive chain of services and programs that may serve different jurisdictions and clientele, but that is deeply rooted in similar goals and ideals. Where we stumble is when we focus exclusively on our principal jurisdiction without considering where we sit on the continuum of libraries and how the work we do for our specific constituency supports and leads to the success of other library jurisdictions. For example, what happens if school libraries do not receive the support they need to develop information literacy among children in the school system? We end up with the problem such as the one highlighted by the New Brunswick librarians where they have young adults coming to the public system not knowing their basic information skills.  Without a collaborative effort on behalf of all libraries, we end up with a patchwork of programs with each one having strengths and weaknesses and each one working outside the scheme of what others are doing. This lack of continuity is further aggravated by the political and jurisdictional problems in Canada since different library communities come under provincial or federal agencies. This is particularly true of the school library community which comes under the provincial jurisdiction of Ministries of Education, while public, academic and special libraries can often reach out for support from both provincial and federal agencies.

For me, this reinforces and highlights the need for an umbrella organization like the Canadian Library Association which is dedicated to improving all libraries along the continuum by accessing resources and support from across the social, economic and political spectrum. The five Divisions within CLA represent the full continuum of libraries needed by all Canadians; these same Divisions work hard to improve the quality of programs and services within their specific areas, while collaborating within the CLA framework to strengthen all libraries. In addition to providing leadership within the broad library community, CLA reaches out to the literacy community, the arts and cultural communities and the business and industry communities throughout Canada. Together, we weave the fabric of a rich and fulfilling society.

In today’s complex world, it is not enough to say that at some point in their lives, everyone needs a library. We need libraries at all points in our lives and we need to support the full development of a strong continuum of libraries. We need to build lifelong libraries.

Stage or Time in Life	Literacy Areas	Programs and Services Used	Libraries Involved
Preschool Stage (0-5/6 years old)	Family literacy Emergent Literacy	Developing early habits for literacy Developing the importance of literacy in our lives. Supporting   parents information needs. Programs for reading, creating .... Early introduction to information skills (library usage; simple location skills...)	Public Library School-Housed Public Library Informal Libraries in a DayCare or Preschool
School Stage (5/6 -18 years old)	Literacy ( reading and writing) Numeracy Information Literacy Media Literacy Computer Literacy Science Literacy Multiple literacies	wide range of resources needed for curriculum. Wide range of learning outcomes information processing (research) Resource-based learning technological competence access community resources access other libraries information technologies (Internet, WWW, CD-ROM....)	School Libraries Public Libraries Specialized Libraries Virtual Libraries
Post-Secondary Stage (18+)	Personal development Professional goals academic, professional or workplace literacy goals Personal information needs for recreation, family life, health	post-secondary learning needs research and project activities specialized library services for reference, research...... Interlibrary loans online journals and databases	Academic libraries Professional libraries Virtual Libraries National Library Institutional libraries businesses and corporate libraries Public Libraries
Adult life ( post-school, into work life, family life, retirement...	Lifelong learning Workplace literacy Adult literacy Pre-school and school literacies	Access information for daily problem-solving Working with new information Coping with change Coping with information overload Techno-stress Developing family literacy awareness and needs	Public Libraries Workplace libraries Virtual libraries and online services Academic libraries and schools as an adult learner