School libraries shifting to digital collections stimulates media interest
Contact: Jennifer Petersen
ALA PR Coordinator
312-280-5043
NEWS
For Immediate Release
November 17, 2009
CHICAGO – Recently, the Cushing Academy, a private boarding school in Massachusetts, attracted attention with its decision to discard all 20,000 books in the school’s library in favor of an entirely digital collection.
The issue stimulated media interest, and the American Library Association’s (ALA) Public Information Office (PIO) responded by recently coordinating two interviews addressing the future of school libraries with USA Today and NPR’s “All Things Considered.” ALA president Camila Alire and American Association of School Librarians’ (AASL) president Cassandra Barnett participated in these interviews.
Alire appeared on a Nov. 9 segment on NPR. The segment and corresponding Web article, “Digital School Library Leaves Book Stacks Behind,” can be found at:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120097876#commentBlock
USA Today, the newspaper with the second highest circulation in the country, with nearly 2 million daily readers, also ran an article on this issue entitled “School chooses Kindle; are libraries for the history ‘books’?” In the Oct. 27 article, both  Alire and  Barnett say that the Cushing Academy’s move to get rid of all print books “is not necessarily a model for other school libraries.” The article can be found at:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2009-10-26-kindle-school-library_N.htm.
The Public Information Offices manages the public awareness efforts of the Association through the Campaign for America's Libraries, delivering key messages to external audiences about the value of libraries and librarians.
