My hometown school library

Just read a post about my hometown school library. Interesting things are happening back home! The media center converted a section of its space into a cyber-cafe. The move was spearheaded by a student leadership group. The group was asked to envision its dream high school and part of that dream included a library with couches and comfy chairs and apparently no non-fiction books.

Results indicated that 80 to 85 percent of the non-fiction books had not been checked out in the last 10 years. Although it was once a library, where hundreds of books took up much of the space, the JHS media center is now a place where students can get up-to-date information through use of computers and the Internet. Books can still be found in the media center, Duwenhoegger (principal) said, but noted that most of them are fiction or books students read for pleasure, not for doing research. Regardless of what is found in the media center, students are using it and that makes their principal and teachers happy.

My first thoughts are to congratulate my alma matter on its progress in building an environment ready for 21st century skills, yet I wonder about what is going on with the low circulation in non-fiction. As a frequent reader of Marc Aronson's blog, NonFiction Matters on the School Library Journal website, I am set aback by the dismissal of non-fiction texts.

In a post from December titled, Standing at the Crossroads, Marc highlights several forces that put school libraries at the crossroads about the place of non-fiction in the stacks:

So vector one is, as I have said too often, the heedless, all-too-satisfied-with-itself world of the children's book world that considers its taste for fiction (to put it politely) or aversion from nonfiction (as I see it) as both normal and good.

Vector two is the fact that, as Deb of librarymusings points out, digital resources can provide information, and even dueling viewpoints, without the need for an author or a print book. Deb suggested that our nonfiction should aim to be more like the adult "narrative nonfiction."

Which brings up vector three: right now a nonfiction books for upper middle grade or high school can count on being reviewed in only four places: SLJ, Booklist, Kirkus, Voya. The Horn Book and BCCB are extremely selective, and Publishers Weekly hardly ever reviews older nonfiction at all. I guarantee you -- from recent personal experience -- that at least one of those reviewers will still associate nonfiction with the very kind of bland, distant, "information" Deb correctly says libraries no longer need.

Marc goes on to argue for non-fiction writers and readers to continue to push for their place in the stacks.

Which brings me back to the beginning, what pressures did JHS Media Center succumb to when it dumped its non-fiction? Why were the books not being checked out? Are there different books that could have replaced them? Will students be using the Cyber Cafe to construct knowledge about real world issues or will they just be updating their facebook pages...