Most international schools have a sizable
student population who speak a language
other than English (LOTE), and offer language instruction in either mother
tongue or second language at various levels. The question then is what role the school
library plays in building a LOTE collection and how this can be financed and
what other options exist.
Both the IBO (International Baccalaureate
Organisation) and UNESCO encourage schools and learning communities to provide active support to promote learning and
maintenance of mother tongue (Morley, 2006; UNESCO Bangkok, 2007). A school
library’s aim should be to ensure that the LOTE collection supports the aims of
the school for classroom instruction and external examination, pleasure reading
and exposure to the literature of the various cultures of the campus community.
A review of
the LOTE collection can be undertaken in the following steps: an overview of
the existing collection; information gathering on the language profiles of the
school community (students, parents, educators); understanding of the language
provision at the school including mother tongue and second language
acquisition; reviewing LOTE collections in the community; creating a LOTE
collection development policy and other considerations.
Overview of the existing collection
Initially it is important to gain an
overview of the school’s existing collection and how that is catalogued. If our school is anything to go by, there will be reading books, language text books (temporarily as they get
loaned out at the start of the school year), and language teaching resources
for teachers in the library. Those are the books we
know of. However, depending on how
tightly or loosely the library manages resources, individual language departments or teachers may have anything from vast to tiny collections in their
classrooms purchased by departmental budgets (or often the purse of the
teacher) which are neither catalogued by the library nor even known of outside of that department. This will differ from school to school
depending on the amount of control the library has over resource budgets, the
amount of sharing that goes on and the co-operation between the library and
departments.
Even finding out the extent and location of resources can potentially be a political
minefield, so proceed with caution and bear in mind what may seem to be an
innocent question / request on your side may be misinterpreted on theirs …
Language
profile of the school community
Try to understand the language profile of
your school community. Are there any
significant language groups within the student, parent or educator body? Think
carefully where you get this information from – for example if the school is
English medium, parents may put “English” as the mother tongue and the mother
tongue as a second language or even omit other languages spoken at home
completely in any admissions documents.
Hopefully the school does some kind of census that is separate from the
admissions process. Does the Parent Association have language or nationality representatives who can support the library, financially or otherwise?
Understanding
school’s language provision
In addition you need to establish how many
students follow which language streams
in the various sections of the school, and gain an understanding of the various levels. Hopefully language
teachers are cooperative and enthusiastic in explaining the needs of their
students for books that encourage reading outside and around the curriculum and
for pleasure, not just what is required in the classroom. They should also be able to help with the
levelling of materials to ensure a culture of reading is sustained in all
languages not just English and students are not frustrated with the complexity
of materials available but the library has a range of materials at all difficultly
levels.
Reviewing
LOTE collections in the community
In the International / expatriate community, LOTE
collections often exist outside of the school. Need for LOTE resources in a particular language is not necessarily a
function of number of L1 (mother tongue) or L2 (second language) speakers. For example in Singapore, a few sizeable
language communities (Korean, Japanese, and to a certain extent Dutch and
French) rely on language and culture centres in Singapore sponsored in part by their
National Governments, while the Singapore National
Library holds Chinese, Malay and Tamil books. The
role of the library would be one of collaboration and directing these
populations to the relevant resource, (e.g. through the website and inter-library
loans) rather than building up a potentially redundant collection. If the community has any International schools
that focus primarily on one language (in
Singapore this includes the German, French, Dutch, Korean and Japanese schools each with their own library), they could be approached for reciprocal borrowing
or interlibrary loan privileges. Embassy and cultural attaches may be another
source of funding or resources.
Creating
a LOTE collection development policy
Depending
on the size and status of the LOTE collection, it may not be necessary to
create a separate LOTE collection
development policy (CDP). LOTE
collection issues can be dealt with within the overall CDP.
For
example, the library strives to a goal of
up to 20 books, excluding textbooks, per student. LOTE books can be expressed as a meaningful
percentage per language of this aim.
Provision
should be made for language teachers selecting
books with input from parents or native speakers in the college
community. Use can made of various
recommendation lists including that of the IB Organisation (IBO) and
collaborative lists of the International School Library Networks and language
specialist schools.
Acquisition may be a tricky areas where books are either
not available locally, are prohibitively expensive or are not shipped to the
country. Provision often needs to be
made for the acquisition by teachers, parents or students during home leave and
reimbursed by the school. However, the
budget and type of books needs to be vetted in advance so that there is little
chance of miscommunication on either the cost or type of books thus acquired. A LOTE selection profile, such as that created
by Caval Languages Direct (Caval. n.d.) can be adapted to fit the school’s
needs.
As far as
possible, it would be helpful if the library processes and catalogues all books which the school has paid for,
irrespective of whether it came from the library budget or not. In this way,
the real collection is transparent, searchable and available to the whole
community (on request obviously for classroom / department materials) and to avoid duplication in acquisition or under-utilisation of materials.
Cataloguing LOTE materials can be a challenge,
particularly if they are not in Latin script.
It is important to still have cataloguing guidelines that are followed
to ensure consistency and ease of search and retrieval. Our school makes use of parent volunteers and
teachers who fill the data into a spreadsheet that is then imported into our
OPAC system. Our convention is to have
the title details in script, followed by transliteration, followed by
translation in English. Search terms need to be agreed with by the LOTE collection users, such as language teachers and students.
As far as donations are concerned, the library
still needs to have a clear policy on what books they accept and in what
condition. Although donated books may be
“free”, they are not without cost, including processing and cataloguing cost.
Apart from
physical books, it is worthwhile looking at what resources are available online either as eBooks or as other digital
resources. For example BookFlix and
TumbleBooks offer materials in Spanish.
Often individual language departments maintain their own lists and links
to digital resources, which could be incorporated into a Library Guide and made
available to the whole community.
Budget may be a contentious area and often language
material discussions occur at administration or department level without the
involvement of the library and an expectation may exist that the library will
provide LOTE "leisure reading" materials within its overall resource budget perhaps without an
explicit discussion on the matter or a breakdown between resources and budget
of the various languages.
Other considerations
International
schools are a dynamic environment,
and a language group may be dominant for a period of time and then disappear
completely due to the investment or disinvestment of multi-national companies
in the area. IB schools face the need to
provide for self-taught languages and
any changes made by the IBO and the school from time to time. The IBO currently offers 55 languages, which theoretically could be
chosen. The IBO introduced changes in its language curriculum in 2011,
substantially increasing the number of works that need to be studied in the
original language rather than in translation.
This places an additional burden on the library to have sufficient texts
in the correct language available on time.
The socio-economic demographic of students
with LOTE needs should also be considered. If most of the student body comes
from a privileged background where LOTE books are purchased during home
leave, the school could institute
donation drives where “outgrown” books are donated to the school. It would be more equitable to use resources
for scholarship students in order to maintain their L1 even if these languages
do not form a large part of the communities’ LOTE.
The quality of materials in Southeast Asian
languages is generally extremely poor.
The cost of acquiring, processing and cataloguing the materials far
exceeds the purchase price and books deteriorate rapidly. There is considerable scope for moving to
digital materials, however the availability, format, access, licensing issues
and compatibility will have to be investigated.
Schools, in
conjunction with parents, needs to consider language provision for students who
plan on returning to a LOTE university after graduation.
Centres of Excellence
A
literature review suggests that the centre for excellence and expertise in
building LOTE collections is Victoria Australia, (Library and Archives Canada, 2009),
in fact the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions
(IFLA) Multicultural Communities Guidelines for Library services is based on
their guidelines (IFLA, 1996). These
guidelines suggest the four steps of; needs identification and continual
assessment, service planning for the range of resource and service need, plan
implementation and service evaluation.
Some
LOTE Digital resources
Library
services
References
Kennedy,
J., & Charles Sturt University. Centre for Information Studies. (2006).
Collection management : a concise introduction. Wagga Wagga, N.S.W.: Centre for
Information Studies, Charles Sturt University.
Morley, K. (2006). Mother Tongue Maintenance - Schools Assisted Self-Taught A1 Languages. Presented at the Global Convention on Language Issues and Bilingual Education, Singapore. Retrieved from
http://www.ibo.org/news/documents/morley2.pdf
UNESCO
Bangkok. (2008). Improving the Quality of Mother Tongue-based Literacy and
Learning Case Studies from Asia, Africa and South America. UNESCO Bangkok Asia
and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education Asia-Pacific Programme of Education
for All (APPEAL). Retrieved from
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0017/001777/177738e.pdf
