So You Want to Build a School Library? Part III

Welcome to So You Want to Build a School Library? Part III! This is part three of four, so we're nearly there. I've discussed where the idea came from, and some of the factors motivating me to really dig in an focus on the library this year. Now we come at last to the actual implementation of this school library. Time to (quite literally) get our hands dirty!

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Step 2: Method to the Madness, or, pulling this library together

One problem I’m trying to address with this library project is the lack of access to books that so many Cameroonians face. At my school, these problems begin with a literal lack of access to the library. That is to say, the door handle is missing. Not broken; not stuck; literally, missing. There is none. Il n’y a pas. Handle wala. 

At this point, I am one of three people with a key to the library. Despite the lack of handle, we have a big padlock latching the doors shut which, I have discovered through much trial and error, can be used in combination with sheer brute force to pry the doors open. Problem solving, Peace Corps style. 

We’ve now managed to get into the library. Welcome — please disregard the bats in the ceiling. If you’d been here a month ago, you’d have found the floor coated with dust and bat poop an inch and a half thick, the desks in disarray, and the shelves empty, the books we did have shoved into boxes and scattered around the room. Just how that came to be, I’m not sure, but I returned after a long summer to find that some of the boxes had been placed in the centre of the room directly under a leak in the roof, rendering many of the books unreadable. Others were mouldy and damp, the pages stained and stuck together. Still more books had been infested with termites, and I picked them up only to have them fall apart in my hands. 

The weeks after my return to school were spent mostly in that dusty, mouldy room, trying to clean and sort books into piles of completely destroyed, mostly destroyed, and mostly ok. From there, I began to register the remaining books. Each book was given an individual code consisting of a letter (or letters) and four numbers, a system that I shamelessly borrowed from a brilliant volunteer in my staige. The letters corresponded to the ‘category’ of the book — M for mathematiques, HG for histoire/geographie, R for Roman, ANG for Anglais, and so on. I began numbering at 0001, and went up from there. So Biologie 5e might be labelled as SCI0025, and Germinale might be R0046. The system is simple, low-tech, and easy to replicate — all of the ingredients for a (hopefully) sustainable system of organisation. 

In addition to registering books, the other librarian and I agreed that we would start a student registry, to keep track of the students who are checking books out and have on record a means of tracking them down in the event that a book goes missing. It takes a little time, and the students are often confused when I ask if they’ve registered yet. Sometimes a student will look over his or her friends’ shoulder and translate the questions into patois, which makes me wonder how many of them can’t actually read the column titles that explain the requested information. 

A community member, a doctor at the village health centre, stops by every now and again. He likes to read, he told me, and was excited to see that the library was open. The third time he came by, he asked if he could ask the Principal for permission to donate two shelves, a table, and a chair to the library. They were not being used at the health centre and he thought they could be put to better use here, he explained as he looked at the students crammed four to a desk pouring over an informatique textbook, students sitting on the floor to flip through a GEO magazine, students pushing each other for space to examine their options on our single shelf of French fiction books. 

Beginning in September and running through the first week of October, I ran a very successful fundraising campaign to raise money to purchase books for the library. Shout out to everyone who donated -- thank you, thank you so much for your contributions! I've already begun purchasing books here in Cameroon, and we have a large shipment of books coming in any day now. 

Since mid-September, I have registered nearly 600 books. We’ve rearranged desks and shelves to fit more students into the library, and the floors are now regularly cleaned rather than habitually ignored. The shelves are organised by subject, and are generally neat (or as neat as they can be). There is a tin where students and teachers can submit requests for new acquisitions, and the chalkboard is decorated with quotes about the importance of reading and education. But most importantly, more importantly than any physical object in the room, for the first time in a long time, the library is filled with students.