Off the library shelves
Fostering students’ ownership of the school library Dharamjeet Kumar
I
remember when I was in school we had a library and there was a fixed period for students to spend time reading in the library. I developed an attachment to the library and it continued through my life in the university. The library, for me, was not just a place for reading but a place I could escape to when I felt lonely. At school, we had a fixed period for the library, but at the university, I could spend more time there.
livelihoods in the flood affected rural parts of Assam) we believe that access to books and reading is the right of every child. It is this belief that pushed us to go ahead with our library intervention programme for the school.
Photos courtesy: Dharamjeet Kumar
As a professional, when I started working in the field of education and had the opportunity to build a library, I asked myself, “Can a library be a non-judgmental space where users feel safe both physically and mentally?” This question was born out of my childhood experience with libraries. The attachment that I formed with the library had much to do with the space being non-judgmental towards me. Picture of the school during floods
The Hummingbird School, Majuli
The Hummingbird School, run by Ayang Trust – a registered non-profit organization based in Majuli, Assam, where I work, is situated on a river island surrounded by the mighty Brahmaputra. The rich diversity of the communities that live in these dense green surroundings makes it one of the most beautiful places. However, it is also a place where most of its people spend a substantial part of the year preparing for the imminent floods, facing the floods and then recovering from the floods. For the people living here, accessing books and allocating time for reading isn’t easy, but at Ayang Trust (which works for the promotion of public education and
Considering the geographical challenges and natural vagaries that these communities have to constantly deal with, we realized that a sustainable and dynamic yet relevant library has to be collectively owned by its users. Collective ownership widens the vision of the library as it gives users an equal say in shaping the library to their liking, keeping in mind their needs. I believe that a library has to evolve as a democratic space and help in empowering the voices of the people using it. Just when we started building our library in The Hummingbird school, I was fortunate enough to participate in a Library Educators Course (LEC) conducted by the Bookworm Trust, Goa. During the course, I was introduced to a paper by Ivanka Stricevic (a Croatian writer who is a strong advocate of public libraries). Reading this paper expanded my vision of libraries. In her paper (Stricevic, 2000), Stricevic writes how during the Croatian war, the library (citing the example of libraries in Croatia’s capital, Zagreb) became a shelter, particularly for TEACHER PLUS, AUGUST 2020
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