By Lilly Adjorkor ADJEI/Isaac Ato Mensah
Tema – 15 February, 2019
The recent news that the Ghana Library Authority will declare 2019 the Year of Reading must surely provoke writers and library workers to pen down their experiences.
‘We are receiving about 100,000 books from Book Aid International and this means that our libraries will have fresh content from across the world,’ said Hayford Siaw, the boss of the Ghana Library Authority. ‘The truth is that the more books a library has, the more people visit the library.’
Managing a basic school library in a resource poor country is not for the faint hearted.
‘Our mini library is in a boarding school trunk, and we have the main one downstairs,’ said Rosemary Wiredu, a teacher at Dansoman 1 Basic School in Accra. ‘We the teachers manage the library ourselves.’
Their school has one of the few public basic school libraries in Ghana.
At a private School in Teshie, a part time teacher created the library in a Ghana-Must-Go bag; he chose two JHS 1 girls as his library assistants.
The proprietress had given 300 Cedis (USD70) to buy the books.
Then there were several trips to Opera Square, Makola Shopping Mall and EPP Books all in Accra to get the best bargain; as many books as possible covering various thematic areas.
Thankfully, the EPP Books cashier at the Makola branch donated three books which he added to the school’s stock.
The Teshie school is visited every Wednesday by a Rastafarian pushing a cart of books donated by a US NGO to the Teshie Community.
After the official once-a-week library period from 8:30-10am, the soft spoken Rasta man just collects his books and leaves quietly.
If some books don’t get returned, he politely asks the children to return them on his next visit.
If you are trying to encourage reading and children steal your books, what really can you say.
Another private school in Tema, is more fortunate.
They have well stocked and fully functional library.
There are hardcopy books and ebooks.
The library is sectioned into the computer research area, the book research area and the independent reading section.
There is Internet connectivity thus, allowing students to find information relevant to their various subjects of study.
It has a dedicated member of staff who runs programmes with the students to enhance their reading skills as well as their writing skills.
The ebooks are mainly solicited from websites such as getepic.com and dogo news.
The students (Cambridge exam candidates), write their own story books using a well structured website called Storybird.
Students with the help of the school are able to publish their own stories to the pleasant surprise of parents.
There is a recording studio where students can record story books as audio files as well as display their creativity in news reading, presenting and music.
The library is still a work in progress.
In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell narrated convincingly, how the PTA of Bill Gates basic school bought desktop computers – uncommon commodities then – at about USD400 each and donated them to the school.
Gladwell, inferred that Gates, his school and the PTA were all outliers in the 1960s and 1970s, which situation gave him access to practice computer programming.
At Writers and Shakespeares Ghana Limited, our campaign, starting with this article, is that more fortunate schools will adopt the lesser endowed schools and invite their students at least once a term to get some exposure at their library facilities.
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