The books are on the new shelves, the notable guests are seated, and the ribbon is set to be cut. Then, in a flourish of awe, students fill in to enjoy celebrating the new library in their school.

Theodore Sizer states that “literacy is the fuel for freedom … a right” (Plaut, 2009, p. x). The lack of access to a library denies children the liberty to further their education as independent life-long learners, a foundational principle of a democratic society (AASL, 2007; Jaeger & Burnett, 2010). Think of the stories about the human condition that embrace us when we are in a library. Authentic student agency is fostered when the power of story is woven across a school community.

As a veteran school library teacher and a district-wide library services director for Boston Public Schools (BPS), I believe that, and there is research to support this tenet: students with equitable access to effective school library programming (ESLP) garner a sense of wonder and the love of reading. The collaborative, information literacy skills that they acquire intertwine with the Democratic Schools’ defining concepts. I deem students the informationally underserved (IU) (Froggatt, 2015) when they learn without access to a dedicated library teacher who facilitates inquiry-based learning, showcases rich resources of fiction and nonfiction physical and digital texts, and collaborates fully with the school community. The students that I studied were urban young adults, many from families in poverty. However, the IU can be of any age and can live in rural and suburban settings. Unless the IU can access a public library, many possess little cognizance of their information worlds (Jaeger & Burnett, 2010), the source of the online content and who controls this access. For many schools without librarians or libraries, both near and far, I hope that the scenarios offered here bring elements of democratic schools to light. The use of story, the library pedagogical, and the management descriptions outlined below, all underscored with theoretical foundations, can be incorporated into a school community’s teaching and learning practices.

Libraries are an element of the public sphere and provide an open arena for authentic, student-driven learning that empowers an exchange of intellectual content that is “essential to the functioning of a democracy” (Jaeger & Burnett, 2011, p. 165). School libraries weave together voices and perspectives in order for students to become informationally literate and participate in information exchanges and public discourse. These are significant elements of a democratic society. For a student, free and open library collections, book discussions, inquiry-based learning, and authentic research where students answer their own questions mirror a community’s communication network that includes “the public press, forums, schools libraries, and other settings” (Jaeger & Burnett, 2011, p. 165).

School library book collections are a tangible representation of knowledge and provide a visual outflow of ideas through the curation of culturally relevant literature and texts in all formats. Information is “intangible” (Buckland, 1991, p. 352). IU students are in the conundrum of not having enough background information to create new knowledge. Guidance and serendipity are ways to acquire information for learning. Curated digital or physical library collections are tangible representations of knowledge where students can access and explore what they need for the question or curiosity at hand. The following student learning scenarios from my career as a school library teacher and a school district director highlight how an ESLP fosters a democratic school environment.

One student, a 14-year-old Boston Arts Academy (BAA), reluctantly entered the library and barked that he “hated to read.” Rising up to the challenge, I asked Rashaun about his interests. Impudently, he said, “Hip hop!” BAA, Boston’s only performing and visual arts high school, offers students a strong collection in the arts. As we walked along in that section of the library, I pointed out architecture, visual arts, theater, dance, and then music books that moved from classical to rock to jazz to hip-hop books. Rashuan’s eyes grew wide and he paused and said with respectful awe, “I never knew there were books like this.” Another student, Rafael, has a passion for soccer and he found his library niche in sports biographies. For these young adults and countless others, library access opens up new worlds and to the “windows and mirrors” of their lives (Sims, 2015). A curated library collection can open new worlds and reflects one’s own world. These IU students became regular library users who leveraged the social capital, background knowledge, and information access skills that a library offers (Bundy, 2008) to develop their agency to satisfy personal curiosities and academic responsibilities.

The BAA community used summer reading as a way for teachers to get to know students who were not in their classes or homerooms. An alternative to assigning one book per grade level or one book that the whole school community reads, students had ten choices from which to choose ranging from fiction to graphic novels to nonfiction to poetry. Upon returning to school, students were grouped by the book they chose rather than by grade or art major. Some students stepped up to co-facilitate the discussions. The administrators created a schedule where, for an hour every person in the school, from the nurse to the head of school, was engaged in authentic discourse. As the library teacher, I coordinated with a team to make the book selections and supported creating an adaptable discussion protocol that could be used with any book. We were able to receive funds in order for every student to receive their own book. Krashen (n.d.) suggests that in order to “defend children against the effects of poverty … providing improved school and classroom libraries … can even mitigate the effects of poverty on school achievement and literacy development” (p. 2). On the day that we passed out the summer reading books, there was a palpable, electric energy throughout the school.

Until poverty is drastically reduced or eliminated, schools need to defend children against its effect on student growth. This means providing nutrition, health care, a clean environment, and books. In terms of policy, this means continued and expanded support for free/reduced meal programs, increased school nursing care, and, of course, improved school and classroom libraries.

Books, reading, and sharing literature are primary avenues for how school library teachers know well most students, the faculty, the curriculum, and the community. Looking back, no matter the library where I have served, the sharing of personal stories through books prompts the development of close relationships. I tend to know my library patrons much better than they know me. Trust is nurtured by the embrace of a rich, culturally responsive library collection of books and the stories therein. Library programs foster a culture of reading and open ears and hearts to bring a shared community. This open, intimate information exchange can reach every corner of the school and fosters genuine care for others.

In the mid-1990s, close to the onset of the ubiquitous nature of educational technology, I was the library teacher at East Ridge Middle School in Ridgefield, Connecticut, a school of over 1300 sixth to eighth graders. “I only use books! I don’t need to bring my students to the library.” This was my greeting from a seasoned teacher, Mr. Roberts, part of a four-person eight-grade history team. As I began to work with grade level and content areas, and extended the hand of collegiality, in time, he became the library’s biggest proponent. Mr. Roberts and I first began collaborating by developing library book reserve carts for his classroom. We talked about our shared belief that disciplinary literacy is significant, and we bonded over the books his students were using.

At this time, we were new to many of the nascent models of information literacy: “where resource-based learning, constructivism, and the development of thinking skills … and practice come together” (Farmer & Henri, 2008). Through discourse with Mr. Robert’s history team, we offered biography as a genre for students to acquire information literacy skills and dig into the content from American history regarding time periods, places, and events of importance. We partnered with the grade eight English teachers as well and developed inquiry-based, interdisciplinary biographical research lessons. Students were challenged to choose a person from history and answer, “Who is this person and why should I care?” (Froggatt & Gately, 1999). This was a common touchstone for all 350 students. They all did independent research, wrote an opinion paper, and gave an oral presentation using PowerPoint, which at the time was cutting-edge software.

Despite a complicated schedule, each quarter, 80 students used the library to research sports figures, artists, gangsters, activists, and other famous and infamous folks from American history. Guided by the teachers and me, students engaged in reading nonfiction texts from quality digital and print texts that included information analysis of periodicals and websites. They applied information literacy skills to analyze sources as well as critical thinking to investigate the person’s historical context. We trusted the students to do the work and the team trusted me to integrate information literacy with the classroom content including disciplinary reading, opinion writing, citation creation, and plagiarism.

Moving forward ten years, I applied the Guided Inquiry Design model (GID) (Kuhlthau et al., 2015) to create a collaborative research unit. GID begins with an “open-ended concept” (p. 175), in this case, the Harlem Renaissance. This two-word phrase was framed and introduced in class. Boston Arts Academy ninth-grade Humanities students were charged with “identify(ing)” (pp. 56–57) an artist from that era who applied their art to further a social justice cause, generating questions as to why and how. GID begins with a critical “explore” phase (p. 56). We relished the time given to students to bring their background knowledge of the Harlem Renaissance in order to dig through digital and print texts for ideas; in the end, the authentic and creative ways to “share” (p. 58) their new understandings were powerful. Students used the library to “gather” (p. 57) and analyze relevant resources to “create” a position paper and a presentation (p. 57). Then they applied critical thinking and deep reading from a variety of source types—biographies, journal articles, editorials, webpages—to “craft connections between new information and existing knowledge” (Gordon, 2009, p. 21).

The authentic presentations using an art form to express how their artists’ gifts provided 85 examples of how artists can solve challenges in their communities. Imagine Kayla dancing to the jazz standard, “Strange Fruit,” as she depicted Billy Holiday’s tragic life and the song’s centrality to the early civil rights movement (Pak, 2019). School library teachers are tasked with leading inquiry learning that embeds information literacy. Biography, memoir, and fiction are remarkable genres to be leveraged for discourse, building trust, and social change.

We end where we began with the informationally underserved (Froggatt, 2015). The story of the IU’s educational context puts forward this conundrum: One needs knowledge about a given subject in order to locate and create new knowledge about it. IU suffer from this information paradox (Shenton, 2007) and have a right to “the information-transformational-formational challenge of learning” (Todd & Kuhlthau, 2005, p. 86) that effective school library programs provide. Be reminded that the act of distributing information is itself a political act” (Rioux, 2010, p. 13). To that end, consider partnering with a librarian and a library in order to ensure that your student’s stories are heard and that they have the opportunity to learn from other’s stories. Students can then co-construct inquiry learning that includes critical reflection in order to discern their information needs, the information world in which they live, and “aspects of experience and the different perspectives that they involve achieves a ‘decentered’ understanding of the lifeworld” (Benoit, 2002, p. 458).

Lievrouw and Farb claim that “it is equally clear that if people lack the skills and background to understand or use the information resources that are available … Research and policy must assess people’s abilities to use the resources they have, and provide a wider range of learning opportunities for those who wish to take advantage of them” (2003 p. 528). We must remind ourselves that the provision of information services is an inherently powerful activity. Access, control, and mediation of information contain inherent power relationships.

Conclusion

Offering all students avenues to grow their information literacy muscles brings intellectual and active engagement in a democratic society and the schools within. I hope that the lessons I learned from the “informationally underserved” provide you with ideas for authentically engaging with students and teachers when developing or using curated resources whether they be physical library books or digital resources. Democratic schools provide opportunities for all students to learn to be critical users of information, authentic creators of ideas, and lovers of literature.