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Writer's pictureJudy Harris

Five Reasons Why School Libraries Are Critical to Student Success

I grew up with weekly visits to the neighborhood public library on Mission Street in Spokane, Washington. It was a gorgeous building with a lovely red brick façade, a wide set of stairs you climbed to come inside, and once inside – oh the smell and view of what seemed like miles of shelves all filled with books. It came complete with the stern librarian but she and my Mom shepherded me to books where I wished I could climb into the worlds within those pages. It was in that library where I got to indulge in my love of horses, dogs, and adventure. It was in that library where I discovered the WORLD!


Fast forward to my first teaching job as a middle school English Language Arts teacher, I was thrilled. I was thrilled because I had a JOB! I was thrilled because the building I was going to be teaching in was on the historic register and it was gorgeous inside. Let’s just say I was thrilled for a million different reasons. But that excitement turned to dust when I moved in and asked, “Where’s the library?” and found myself aghast at the answer from the school’s secretary, “Our Principal closed it down two years ago, said we didn’t need physical books anymore, and everything we needed could be found on a computer!”


Wowza! Was I shocked! How could an educator advocate for shutting down a library? How could the teachers in the building and the administrators at the district office allow this? But in my first year of teaching rescue for this school’s library showed up and it didn’t really start with me. It started with a wonderful, tiny little powerhouse of a student, Kelly Hansen, who decided that it was ridiculous that our school didn’t have a library. Kelly said, “Kids need books to read, they need books to explore, they need books for research. We have to rebuild the library.”

Then we were off to the races and rebuild we did. Was it a lovely library with computers and a librarian, no. But did we gather hundreds of books and organize them into a lending library for the students – you bet we did!


Kelly knew school libraries were essential way back when and that hasn’t changed in 2020. Here are five more reasons why school libraries are essential for today’s students.


1. Libraries offer more than the internet can.

The collections in an online library are vastly different from the material found on the Internet because the publishing process involves rigorous editorial checks and quantitative analysis.

In a limited-access database associated with a library, users can find books, newspapers, journals, magazines, and more. While students may find these databases through search engines, accessing them requires registration. At that point, students are no longer just on the Internet; they are in a library.


2. Libraries help raise reading scores.

One study based on National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) data examined the effects of widespread librarian and media specialist layoffs on student reading test scores from 2004 to 2009. In most districts, fewer librarians meant lower test scores or scores that did not rise as quickly. On the other hand, 19 of the 26 states that added librarians saw an average rise of 2.2 percent in reading scores, with the study controlling for the addition of other educational staff.


3. Interaction with Libraries Boosts Literacy Development.

Research consistently demonstrates that libraries are indispensable because of their role in fostering the country’s literacy. One study by the Pennsylvania Library Association suggests that kids who participate in library preschool programs demonstrate more pre-reading skills and emergent literacy behaviors than their peers.


4. Librarians Collaborate with Teachers to Enhance Curricula.

When teachers collaborate with librarians, they are three times as likely to rate their literacy teaching as excellent. Similarly, the more time librarians spend cooperating with classroom teachers, the more they promote information literacy independently, and the more in-service they provide teachers, the higher student test scores rise.


5. Libraries Improve Student Attitudes About Learning

Recent studies of library systems in Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, and Pennsylvania found that professional trained and credentialed school library media specialists have a positive effect on student achievement. School libraries and libraries help students buy-in to their learning and they help them get excited about learning.



No matter what digital advocates say about libraries and specifically libraries in schools, they are not now nor will they ever be relics or antiques to be swept away in the latest educational trend. The presence of libraries and librarians has an undeniably positive effect on literacy and reading test scores. We simply cannot afford to do away with something that, time and time again, research shows has a positive impact on student learning.

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