SCHOOL LIBRARIES WORLDWIDE

Volume 9, Number 1, January 2003

Theme: Reading in the Age of Harry Potter

The School Library as a Space for Learning [PDF file]
Louise Limberg and Mikael Alexandersson
The aim of the paper is to present findings about the meaning of the school library as a space for learning as experienced by students. This complex aim implies a theoretical framework that consists of a sociocultural perspective on learning and a phenomenological perspective of space. Data were collected through observations, interviews and questionnaires in seven schools (8 to 19 year-old students) during one year. Among the various meanings of the school library emerging from the data analysis are a warehouse for books, a place of leisure and refuge, a place of strict order and quiet, and a service area. The school library also appears as an opaque information system. Conclusions are that the library has potential to support an alternative discursive practice in a school provided that the predominant meaning of the school library as a warehouse for books is challenged by other meanings such as a space for free discourse and intellectual activity as well as a space for collective rather than individual action.

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Last updated 5 December 2008 (KSB)