By Anita Brooks Kirkland, Carol Koechlin, and Diana Maliszewski
A book for every student. This statement seems self-evident to teacher-librarians and all school library professionals. Finding “just the right book” for every young reader is fundamental to our mission to engage young students in reading for information and for pleasure, and to help them develop a lifelong habit of reading. In the school library, students are free to explore and select what appeals to them from a rich and diverse collection.
Over the past two years the concept of a book for every student has taken on new significance. Recent populist movements seeking to ban books have swept across the United States and across the border into Canada. The vast majority of the books targeted feature 2SLGBTQIA+ characters or characters of colour, and/or tell the story of racism in American history.
Our theme for this year’s celebration comes from S. R. Ranganathan’s 1931 theory, “The Five Laws of Library Science”. The guiding principles for librarianship, according to Ranganathan, are:
Dear School Library Project
- Books Are For Use
- Every Reader His/Her Book
- Every Book Its Reader
- Save The Time Of The Reader
- The Library Is A Growing Organism
Considering that for the past several years, school libraries across Canada and the United States have had to deal with large-scale attempts at book bannings/challenges, it was timely to paraphrase the second rule and adopt it as the rallying cry for Canadian School Library Day 2024. The second law is not about the quantity of books in a library; rather, it insists that readers should be able to access texts that interest them, regardless of their identity.
It is probable, given the current political climate, that our battle to protect our students’ intellectual freedom is far from over. We encourage you to be prepared.
- Have a look at the Ontario School Library Association’s guide to writing selection policies, introduced by Danny Neville in this edition
- Read Spencer Miller’s compelling argument for including books that represent intersecting identities, and make your shopping list from his book suggestions
- Watch the QSLiN panel discussion, Open Pages, Open Minds: Navigating Freedom of Expression in Canadian Libraries, shared in this edition
- Read some of the many articles in past editions of CSL Journal on the theme of intellectual freedom
- Dig into CSL’s Collection Diversity Toolkit to guide your own collection development
- Explore resources to support libraries from Toronto Metropolitan University’s Centre for Free Expression