Get a Perspective: From Libraries to Learning “Libratories": The New ABC’s of 21st-Century School Libraries

With nearly 100,000 school libraries in the United States (ALA 2010) serving millions of students, teachers, and community members, it is more important than ever to have a clear answer to the question, “What does the future hold for school libraries in the 21st Century?”

From a shortsighted, cost-cutting perspective, we’ve all heard one disturbing response, “With everything online, why do we even need physical libraries and librarians?” (New York Times 2010).

From the perspective of the 21st-century learning movement, however, there is a very different and much more encouraging answer:

School libraries are essential learning resources and librarians are the essential “guides inside” our schools, leading everyday teaching and learning toward methods and outcomes that best prepare our students for the challenges of the 21st century.

To see why this is true, we first need to step back and ask, “What must students now learn to be successful in our increasingly information-driven, technology-powered world—what are the knowledge and skills most needed for our times?” From this vantage, we can see how well school libraries and librarians are equipped for the future of learning, and we can then outline the ways school libraries and services must evolve through the 21st Century.

Over the Rainbow

The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (P21), a broad coalition of education, business, government, and foundations, has advanced a powerful answer to the question of what students now need to learn—a 21st-century learning framework that captures the essential learning goals and supports most needed in our times (2010).

In this model, the “rainbow” represents the goals or intended outcomes of learning for 21st-century students, and the “pools” below indicate the educational support systems that enable these goals to be met.

The learning goals, as portrayed in Table 1 below, include traditional core subject knowledge areas, such as social studies, math, science, language, etc.; interdisciplinary and contemporary thematic content such as environmental, health, financial, and civic literacy; and three sets of essential skills applied to the learning of content knowledge.

School librarians have deep expertise in Digital Literacy Skills; have well-developed instructional strategies based on thinking critically, communicating creatively in a variety of media, and solving problems creatively; and are often role models for strong leadership, initiative, and other career and life skills.

But how can students best learn all these needed skills as they acquire the content knowledge essential for college, career, and community life in the 21st Century?

On the Road with the Project Bicycle

A particularly effective learning method that incorporates these 21st-century knowledge-and-skills outcomes is the collaborative learning project (Larmer 2009). Students in well-designed and managed learning projects produce artifacts—reports, presentations, videos, podcasts, models, simulations, inventions, etc.—as part of their project work. These learning products can be evaluated for both content understanding and skill proficiency, and can demonstrate increasing competency when included in an ongoing student project portfolio.

A compelling example of a collaborative learning project is the award-winning ThinkQuest Web site that an international team of high school students created on the subject of the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) virus outbreak in 2003.

An in-depth video documentary of the project can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0hfi8WyNz4, and the results of over 7,000 other student-created Web site projects can be seen at http://www.thinkquest.org/library.

All the components of an effective learning project like the SARS project are captured in the learning project “bicycle” model (Trilling and Fadel 2009).

At the heart of an effective learning project is the project cycle: define, plan, do, and review—the “wheels” of the project for both students and teachers. “Steering” the project is the real world question or problem that drives students to research and find appropriate answers or solutions. The gauges of project progress are the formative evaluations and assessments that guide the learning along the way, the “brakes” determine the pace of the project, and the learning “gear” is the sum of the learning resources, human and technological, available to support the project work.

This collaborative learning project approach, powered by technology and using powerful inquiry and design learning methods, is very familiar to most school librarians. In fact, librarians are frequently leaders in promoting this kind of learning in their schools.

As we have seen, libraries and librarians are well-equipped to help lead the move toward 21st-century learning. But how must libraries, as physical entities and learning services, evolve to fully meet the needs of our Net Generation students well into the 21st Century?

Learning Libratories

Libraries are evolving into learning laboratories or “libratories” (lie-bratories)—environments where a wide variety of learning activities and projects can take place. Part project space, part design studio, part community meeting and presentation space, and part research and development lab, libraries of the future will have a new alphabet of services—the new ABC’s of 21st-century libratories.

From A to G, here are the qualities that libraries of the 21st-century must have, as well as the services that 21st-century “libratorians” must deliver to meet the needs of our future learners and teachers.

Access All-ways

There are many divides—economic, cultural, digital, etc.—that must continue to be bridged to provide an equitable education for all students. Ensuring continuous access to a wide variety of learning tools and resources in school, at home, and everywhere in between must remain a primary responsibility for future libratories.

Providing open access to the information tools and content for 21st-century learning—books, ebooks, computers, laptops, handheld digital devices, online content libraries and databases, videos, educational software, animations, simulations, Web resources, online search tools, media creation software, digital cameras, camcorders, electronic measuring and monitoring tools, cell phones, and all the digital learning tools to come—will always be an essential school service, providing equal opportunity to a 21st-century education for everyone.

Along with access to the digital learning tools and content, libratorians must continue to provide instruction and guidance on how to use these tools safely, appropriately, and effectively.

Books and Blogs

Books, well-designed, engagingly written and illustrated, and especially those geared to young readers, will continue to be libratory mainstays. The evidence is clear that access to motivating books for early readers can boost literacy and reading proficiency (Scholastic 2008). So let’s put this one to rest—books are not going away in the 21st Century!

Books will continue to be joined by more and more online, on screen, Web-based content, much of which will be created by students themselves. Blogs, wikis, social media, collaborative project spaces, online media creation and sharing spaces, and much more, are just the beginning of the digital waves our Net Generation learners will demand in our century. Twenty-first century libratorians will need to help learners and teachers navigate through the vast information ocean to just the right islands of learning content and tools for the tasks at hand, as well as help everyone learn how to efficiently fish for themselves in the deep digital cyber-sea.

Community Connections

As schools become more a part of the community, and the community more a part of schools (CCS 2009), having a comfortable place at school for presentations, talks, demonstrations, performances, discussions, forums, teleconferences, telepresence meetings, and so forth, will become more and more important. School libratories, equipped with the appropriate presentation and communication technologies, will provide a powerful venue for learning from the wider community and for the wider community to learn from the students.

As learning projects centered on real-world issues become a more regular part of the school curriculum, community exhibitions of student projects will become more common.

Students, teachers, parents, professionals, and elected officials will all come to celebrate and learn from students’ projects, their research findings, and their proposed solutions to community issues and problems.

With communication bandwidth increasing and costs declining, the ability to reach out to the wider world community will also become more feasible. Students will “beam in” global expert advisors for their projects, teleconference with students in other countries to share common interests and concerns, and participate on global teams to devise and share local solutions to common global issues and problems such as alternative energy use, community health, and income through entrepreneurship.

Digital Designing

As described above, collaborative learning projects that produce designed learning products—presentations, videos, podcasts, animations, working models, inventions, simulations, songs, plays, and so forth—will need “studio” space for creation, development, rehearsal, and presentation. Libratories will be an important home for many of these projects along with the necessary technology, workspace, tools, and resources.

Twenty-first century libratorians will need to provide project management and communication design expertise to both teachers and students involved in these collaborative projects and to guide project teams to the appropriate informational, community, and human resources needed for successful project outcomes.

With innovation and creativity becoming the fuel that powers new economic growth in the global economy, the demand for students to have more opportunities to create and design will only grow over time. Libratories will need sophisticated tools, and libratorians a high degree of expertise to support a wide variety of dynamic learning projects and products.

Electronic-info Expertise

As libraries become 21st-century libratories, the need to provide guidance on the proper use of information, media, and technology will grow dramatically. Students will be more and more connected to more and more diverse sources of information and social media tools that will need more and more exacting expertise in order to use them safely, effectively, and creatively.

Providing guidance on information literacy, media design principles, and digital technology use will continue to be prized instructional libratorian competencies. The unique impact libratorians will continue to have in helping students, teachers, and parents acquire these 21st-century digital literacies will be one of the most valued contributions they can make to 21st-century learning.

Future Flexibility

As Alan Kay, the inventor of the first portable computing device, once said, “The only way to predict the future is to invent it.”

Future libratories must be highly flexible and adaptable to accommodate the ongoing rush of new technologies, tools, and services. Future libratorians must be even more creative and clever than they are now in making good decisions on which technologies to place into the learning mix in their libratories.

New learning needs will also arise as learning becomes more a part of everyday life outside of school, in the community, at work, and in all aspects of our society—as more “education nations” become a network of global learning societies (Chen 2010).

Global Guides Inside

School librarians today, and libratorians tomorrow, are in a unique position to lead the movement toward 21st-century learning inside schools—to be the 21st-century learning “guides inside.” One of the future challenges of the profession will be to connect with other libratorians around the world and learn from each other, modeling the kinds of learning in their professional community that they wish to see in their schools.

There is much good work to be done in transforming our schools into 21st-century learning environments, and our present and future libratorians must seize the opportunity to create libratories and learning services that clearly help students and teachers acquire the 21st-century knowledge and skills most needed for success in our time.

Table 1: P21 Skills