A new law on education needs to be adjusted so that the libraries become an indispensable part of schools and so that conditions for school librarians are improved. The Russian prime minister's wife, Lyudmila Putinf, intends to achieve this goal. She attended a forum of school librarians called Mikhailovskoye 2010, hosted at Pushkinskiye Gory in the Pskov Region yesterday.
Adults love complaining about their children who are constantly sitting in front of computer screens. Meanwhile, 40% of Russian families have no books at all and 30% of families have fewer than 100 books in their home libraries. Tatyana Zhukova, president of the Russian School Libraries Organisation, cited these statistics yesterday. How can the habit of reading be promoted? Libraries can be a part of the process, but 90% of the books at rural school libraries and 69% in urban school libraries are worn-out .
"This forum's logo, a toy paper ship, is a wonderful choice," Lyudmila Putinf deviated from the cold official wording. "It seems so unstable but it remains afloat. I don't know about you, but I feel like crying..."
Lyudmila Putin has been supervising this area for a few years and school librarians perceive her as an advocate. And they really need government support. Representatives of the school libraries' organisation cite the example of the United States where Laura Bush, being a professional librarian herself, managed to secure a significant increase in school library funding. American library advocates told Tatyana Zhukova that President Obama tried to cut these expenses in the 2011 budget but was talked out of it – the school that his daughters attend has a good library but libraries in other schools are worse so this funding is needed.
Russian school libraries are being modernised, though at a very slow pace. A pilot project to use electronic book readers at school libraries was recently initiated. However, librarians say that electronic books alone will not suffice because children, especially younger children, need bright pictures, a big font and the process of paging through a book must be adjusted to them.
By Yekaterina Grigoryeva