Every day more and more sleek gadgets boasting all sorts of bells and whistles appear on the market.  Video games mesmerize and entertain us while BlackBerrys and cell phones serve us in seemingly infinite ways, but they also do something downright treacherous: they lure students away from books. What a shame that is, too, because nothing ignites our creativity and captivates our imagination like a good book.  Unless we stock our school libraries with current, appealing books, we don’t stand a chance of having our students discover the magic and excitement awaiting them on the printed page. The competition is daunting, and we’d better rise to the challenge.

      The Indiana University Center for Evaluation and Education Policy showed clearly in three reports that new books increase school library circulation.  Imagine that!  All it takes to increase reading among young people is to provide them with new books!  Students will actually set aside the shiny gadgets for a moment if they have shiny new books to read.  Yet many Indiana students attend schools that allow their book collections to deteriorate.  Of course, results differ from school to school, but even so, it’s clear that the lack of independent reading is directly related to the lack of current reading materials in school libraries.  It is not enough to provide strong reading instruction by skilled reading teachers.  If we want to ensure better reading performance from students, we absolutely must provide access to current, appealing, high interest materials in the school library media center.

      There is no escaping the fact that books are expensive.  New books cost an average of $20.  Five books cost $100.  Five hundred books cost $10,000.  Schools should purchase two books per student per year, so a school of 500 students needs to spend $20,000 for 1,000 books each year to maintain a useful book collection.  Yes, this truly is an expensive investment since books last only 10 years before most should be replaced.  But what is the alternative?  If we hope to compete with seductive technology, we have to spend the money.  If we hope to encourage independent reading, we have to spend the money.

      It is no secret that students who read independently score higher on reading tests than those students who do not.  We can build a community of skilled readers if we do what research indicates we must do. Set aside the money for the purchase of books for our school library media centers.  It really is as simple as that.

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