THE SCHOOL LIBRARY IN THE DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT
THE SCHOOL LIBRARY IN THE DIGITAL ENVIRONMENT

Summary/Abstract: As an essential part of the educational process the school library has to meet these days both the challenges of the digital environment. A survey of the school libraries in Romania points out quite noticeable differences between the rural and the cities school communities. There are also strong inequalities as far as the distribution of the electronic equipment, access to internet and library stuff qualification is concerned. In the absence of a coherent, long term central institutional agenda with regard to the school libraries, the betterment of a school library highly depends on the program of the school manager and the professional approach of the school librarian. Yet, on the local plan, the Teachers’ Houses are highly active in supporting and organizing yearly professional training courses and meetings for the school librarians and documentalist teachers. This paper aims to outline the above mentioned matters and then turns to focus on to envisage the required digital literacy, skills and means for a school librarian that could empower them to promote and enhance the library as a physical space as well as a info-documentation resource for the school community to new dimensions that are more likely to be accepted by the young students. The dispute between the hardcopy book and the digital book is being now extended to the increasing gap between the Text and the Book and a newly rising “secondary orality” (Walter Ong, 1982) supported by the media and communication technology.

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