As more and more studies on the effectiveness of school libraries are published, support for school libraries appears to be declining.
Keith Curry Lance's research in the US consistently shows that school library quality is positively related to literacy development. The results of a study done by Syying Lee, Jeff McQuillan and myself, which appeared in the Journal of Language and Literacy Education in 2012 suggest that access to a good school library can offset, to a large extent, the negative impact of poverty on reading achievement.
Despite this research, support for school libraries has been dwindling, as reported by Michael Kelly in the Library Journal in 2011 and we now learn that a similar decline is taking place in Turkey ("2,899 school libraries across Turkey closed in 2014, report shows," August 6, Sunday's Zaman).
We complain that the low levels of literacy in young people, but we destroy the most obvious source of reading material.
Posted at: http://www.todayszaman.com/national_2899-school-libraries-across-turkey-closed-in-2014-report-shows_395750.html
What a pity there are no special interest corporate groups that might profit from investment in school libraries.
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