Written by Lobsang Sangmo
Despite being in exile for 62 years, the Tibetan community in India is fortunate to have good Tibetan schools with all the facilities which also include a Library.
Ever since my childhood I have known the library as a place where we can borrow and return books. It’s been one and a half years since I joined Tibetan Children’s Village, Ladakh as a school librarian, but not being trained as a librarian affects my job and I could not connect well with my children. Then I got the opportunity to join LEC 2021 through our DOE (Department of Education) Central Tibetan Government in Exile.
After joining LEC 2021 and from my first contact period I came to know the library in a totally different way. I never knew that a library can be a place where children can find their happiness, joy of reading and they can forget their loneliness. I experienced that the library can also be a place to do activities like book talk, treasure hunt and other games through which we can introduce new books in the library and find out about books on shelves.
Through the pop-up library activity, I came to know lots of things. If we need to set up a library of our own, we need to know what all we need. So we start with the selection of the theme and the larger idea. Who is the library for and why. The collection of books is most important ( it can be age wise or where the book fits according to the different genre). After that we need to look at the space which should be welcoming with open light and attractive enough to draw readers towards our library. Next is the display of books, we can either display it according to the age group by colour coding the books or we could put it in different genres for easy access of our readers or arrange the books in attractive eye-catching ways. There should be other elements to keep our readers engaged in the library by having different games and other activities. We can have authors talk and also a story telling from the best story teller among our staff in the school.
From the first contact period my view as a librarian changed and now I consider a librarian
- As an educator who helps students develop attitude, habit and skill that helps enable them to become lifelong readers and learners.
- Who actively promotes reading & library use through such activities like storytelling, book talk, treasure hunt etc..
- Librarians should have the knowledge of books and should be able to locate every book on different shelves.
- Who maintains a friendly and helpful atmosphere for students and staff.
These are the new things I learnt from the first contact of LEC and still there is much more to learn. I have started implementing some of the things in my school library and I will keep on learning and implementing.
By nature, our Tibetan children are a little shy and they lack confidence in talking among others, therefore I create a group among the children themselves and they do book talk among themselves. These prove much better and children feel more comfortable to share their stories among themselves. We also invite children to write down book reviews on the computer in the library and they do it with lots of enjoyment. As we say, a library is influenced by different elements and in the school, the library is affected by the top management, teachers, non-teaching staff, parents, authors, publisher, donors and most importantly children.
Thank you LEC 2021 team for showing me a way towards my vision!