Reading Strategies and Library Services for Children and Young Adults (2015)

Abstract

This paper focuses on school libraries in Turkey. It is a general outlook on k-12 education and how the community perceives “the School Library” supported with statistics in relation to the public such as average education of families, literacy rates, school enrollment rates, library visiting rates, etc. (TUIK 2014) While school libraries stir a critical debate on reading habits in Turkey, it is also useful to make an overview of libraries and reading promotion programs that exist. For instance, public libraries do not necessarily offer sufficient programs and contemporary resources for children, young adults (0-18) and their families. Furthermore, preschool enrollment is much lower than Europe and emergent literacy strategies are often not utilized by general public. Since the Ministry of Education distributes text books in schools for free which is advantageous for low income families, searching for new books beyond the given ones does not turn into a vital agenda for especially these families and children. A policy entitled, 100 Basic Literary Works that have been advised by the Ministry of Education for children from 1st grade to 8th grade leads to a rich number of variations to be published while mostly leaving contemporary children’s literature out of school context. Since the list is often regarded as an approved resource, utilizing books beyond the list is at times not preferred by the teachers. In this poster, the short history of school libraries and the problems they face will be pointed. Is a school library part of the education or is it a supplementary issue? How do librarians view this issue? How does the Ministry of Education sees the school library? The country not only faces shortage of school libraries but also trained and certified school librarians which is a major issue. Z-Libraries (Z for Zenginleştirilmiş : Enriched Libraries) is a recent attempt of the government to rejuvenate school libraries in Turkey, emerged recently with almost 500 pilot libraries in schools. While this project offers attractive and colorful library atmosphere for children, strategies for building a rich collection of high quality books that will be part of these libraries is a work in progress. Given that PISA (The Program of International Student Assessment) scores of Turkey have room for improvement, and reading skills and critical thinking is an important part of the PISA assessment, new strategies have been sought. Since research draws connections between PISA scores and preschool reading habits, kindergarten libraries and read …