The issue stimulated media interest, and the American Library Association’s (ALA) Public Information Office (PIO) responded by recently coordinating two interviews addressing the future of school libraries with USA Today and NPR’s “All Things Considered.” ALA president Camila Alire and American Association of School Librarians’ (AASL) president Cassandra Barnett participated in these interviews.
Alire appeared on a Nov. 9 segment on NPR. The segment and corresponding Web article, “Digital School Library Leaves Book Stacks Behind,” can be found at: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120097876#commentBlock
USA Today, the newspaper with the second highest circulation in the country, with nearly 2 million daily readers, also ran an article on this issue entitled “School chooses Kindle; are libraries for the history ‘books’?” In the Oct. 27 article, both Alire and Barnett say that the Cushing Academy’s move to get rid of all print books “is not necessarily a model for other school libraries.” The article can be found at: http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-10-26-kindle-school-library_N.htm.
