Just Too Busy to Celebrate National Library Week, But in a Good Way: Guest Post

Our local primary school library (and media center!) was too busy to celebrate National Library Week. When I realized suddenly that, as the PTA Library Liaison, I might have organized something to celebrate, I couldn’t figure out how. Because, really, the library was just too busy working…as a library.

Our library and its adjacent media center are like the kitchen in a house with its doors flung open. There are always lots of busy, boisterous kids who want a book and a snack and who need to tell you something truly important.

Teachers, administrators and staff make full use of the library by hosting meetings, requesting resources, discussing solutions for tricky teaching situations, hosting book clubs and running Skypes with authors. The library invites impromptu conversations that spark ideas or resolve questions. Perhaps it’s the library’s location, literally in the center of the school. However, it’s more likely that the happy chaos is due to the librarian’s (media specialist!) emphasis on community among the stacks.

In fact, this week our school hosted its annual Silent Auction, a fundraiser months in the making. Parents, teachers and students collaborated in creating art for auction and succeeded in raising the funds required to continue several important projects. The event is held…in the library.

And so, National Library Week was overlooked. Not because we don’t love our library. Rather, because our school library is so central to the academic, social and community life of the school that it was over-run with purpose. Honestly, I think that’s the best homage to libraries that a community can pay, especially on National Library Week.


Guest post by Rebecca Cannon, a GLISA member from Tyler, TX, who will graduate Fall 2016.