Lågstadiet och skolbiblioteket : En undersökning bland skolledare och lärare på lågstadieskolor i Malmö.

The current curriculum requires a well functioning school library and an active use of it. In junior school grades 1-3 the children primarily learn basic skills. Knowledge about libraries and how to use them and different media is part of these skills. Therefore my intention was to investigate how school libraries in junior schools look, how they are used in the training and how they could be used in junior school education. I focus on the pedagogic role of the school library and the library as information center. I begin by going through what the school law and the curriculum say - or do not say - about the use of the school library. A short account of relevant school library research follows. The investigation consists of interviews with principals and teachers at 10 junior schools in Malmö. In some small schools there are no school libraries at all, other schools have very small and inaccessible libraries. None of the school libraries I investigated have a librarian to guide and serve the children. The school libraries collect mostly fiction used for reading practise and ?free reading?. Non-fiction books are often not available to the pupils; they are selected by the teacher ?when needed?. Information skills are not trained in a consciously or structured way. The principals, rather than the teachers, are interested in developing the school libraries as educational tools. What the teachers ask for are ?more books?. It is important to find solutions for school library support for small junior schools. One way is to establish co-operation with larger schools in the neighbourhood both in terms of material and personnel. Another way is to find solutions by using personnel existing staff in the school to work in the school library during the day. It is important to make the possibilities offered by the school library visible through ?good examples? and to create a consciousness about the necessity to provide the ?workstation? library with librarians to guide the pupils in their work