trains, castles and other exotic forms, akin to those found in children’s bookshops.
During the 1990s there has been a decline in new library building projects but a
continued appreciation of the importance of sound design, of attractive and functional
accommodation and furnishing.
Library services to children in educationThe history of British public library services to young people is inextricably linked with
library provision to children in schools. These may take two forms, school libraries and a
centralised school library support service.
Throughout their long history, school libraries have been shaped and influenced by
many official educational and library reports, the work of two professional bodies, the
School Library Association and the Schools Library Group of the Library Association,
and to a lesser extent by legislation (Ray 1982; Office of Libraries and Arts 1984; Kinnell
1995). Unlike Northern Ireland and Scotland, there has never been a statutory
obligation for schools in England and Wales to establish a library or to appoint a
qualified librarian. The absence of legislation and of official standards for funding and
resourcing has resulted in considerable variation of provision amongst the English and
Welsh authorities. This diversity has been exacerbated by the widely differing perceptions
held by headteachers about the importance of the library and the priority given to its
funding.
Although a growth in the appointment of qualified librarians is discernible, many
secondary school libraries are staffed by teacher-librarians or teachers who hold no
formal qualifications in librarianship. Qualified librarians are rarely found in primary
schools. Funding of the library is determined by the headteacher usually in
collaboration with the governors of the school. While bodies such as the Library
Association have published guidelines for school libraries, the standards of provision to
pupils and teachers remain diverse.
Since the 1970s changes in the curriculum, combined with new teaching and learning
theories, and the emergence of information technology have led to the development of a
new concept—the learning resource centre, which has been established in many
secondary schools. The library is no longer seen simply as a repository of materials but
as a medium for learning—at the heart of the education process. Although viewed with
suspicion by some, one outcome of this concept is a new partnership between librarians
and teachers in selecting, creating and exploiting learning and teaching resources, and
designing and delivering information skills training for children. Another significant
development has been the response of the school library to national information
technology initiatives, with school libraries establishing computer facilities, integrated
learning systems, networking systems and most recently, provision for interactive multi-
media.
In both primary and secondary education there is a deep interest in the role of
libraries to support reading and the newer literacies, and a growing recognition that
library collections and services are fundamental to the educational process. In general,
stocks reflect the formal educational demands of the National Curriculum, but many
libraries also support the leisure reading of children with a complementary array of
622 APPLICATIONS OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE