As we celebrate the 2021 SA Library Week (SALW) on March 14-18, we should remind ourselves that library matters. One of the aspirations of the NDP (national development plan) 2030 is that each community has a local library filled with a wealth of knowledge and a librarian who is collecting, organising, and making information accessible.
The NDP envisages the infrastructure that compensates for resource deficits in communities where there are well-equipped libraries, laboratories, computer, and media centres to ensure that pupils in no-fee schools have access to similar learning resources to their counterparts in less poor communities.
Furthermore, the right of access to information as a human right is now an established part of SA law. Community libraries which are responsive to the wide-ranging needs of their users are critical in ensuring an informed public.
Twenty-eight years into democracy, this sounds like a mirage. The uneven distribution and provision of public libraries in all SA communities is glaring and well-documented. In urban areas where libraries exist, they are often soft targets when there are community uprisings.
In many rural areas, schools are the only public institution communities have access to. In these areas, there are fragile social networks, largely dysfunctional community structures, no community libraries, limited access to media, and few sources of information about opportunities.
Even with the rolling out of community libraries through the library conditional grant by the department of sport, arts and culture (DSAC), some provinces such as Limpopo have not taken this opportunity offered and still has a backlog of over 200 community libraries.
In deep rural municipalities such as Blouberg, which falls under Capricorn district in Limpopo, I am told that only three public libraries serve close to 150 villages with an estimated population of about 200,000 people.
People from these villages who wish to access these resources have to travel distances by donkey carts, taxis or on foot to reach the libraries. Limpopo has the highest number (98%) of no-fee schools in the country. These schools are categorised in quintiles 1-3 because of their poor socioeconomic backgrounds.
Unfortunately, schools in quintiles 1-3 are still underfunded and under-resourced, meaning they lack such educational resources as well-resourced and functional libraries and laboratories.
Over 90% of the schools in the province, according to a study by Prof Samuel Mojapelo, operate without libraries, which adversely affects teaching and learning outcomes meaning most teachers and pupils in the province do not have equitable access to the educational resources for curriculum-related accomplishments.
This is one of the reasons the province is battling to produce good grade 12 results. Without exposure to reading materials, pupils are not regular readers, and therefore lack the reading skills, reading habits and reading culture crucial to obtain information and knowledge.
As we know, worldwide SA is at the bottom of the international ranking list of pupils who perform badly in reading, writing and numeracy.
In line with this year’s theme for SALW, the Library and Information Association of SA (Liasa) is urging all in the library and information service (LIS) sector to Reimagine and Repurpose libraries so that the communities being served will Rediscover themselves.
In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic that ravaged our society, we should remember the adage that “every cloud has a silver lining”. While it has taken many lives, the pandemic has offered a window of opportunity not to be missed for the LIS sector to roll out virtual library services to all corners of the country by repackaging information compatible to small screens so that everyone can access such services from libraries without walls. Hence, Liasa urges librarians to also repurpose both their spaces and their services to continue being effective in the communities that they serve.
At the same time, the chasm that exists between those who are in the hub and those who are on the periphery can be narrowed. In this regard, members of the public can quench the knowledge thirst and have the platform to verify information irrespective of their location. Indeed, the world at large is experiencing the era of post-truth, misinformation, and disinformation, as well as anti-intellectualism that is undermining faith in the professional integrity of all knowledge fields including libraries.
Therefore, “libraries matter” as these institutions are best placed to provide information and evidence of facts to counter the misinformation and disinformation. It is necessary that all provinces should seize the opportunity of conditional grant and build more public libraries in rural settings.
• Prof Ngoepe is an archivist, author and academic at Unisa
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