In this book – based on research in India – author V.M. Mohanraj encourages the spirit of library research in school children. Mohanraj advocates library-centered teaching, where the school library is seen as an extension of the classroom, and examines two important topics: library ethics and discipline in the school library. Mohanraj discusses the methods of instilling library ethics in children, which can be done unobtrusively, when children are looking for source books in connection with research or for personal reading pleasure at home. He also points out that the ambience of formality that prevails in classrooms cannot be expected in the school library where the atmosphere is necessarily informal. Unlike teachers, the school librarian cannot afford to be a strict disciplinarian, but instead a friend and guide.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR V M Mohanraj
After a short stint of teaching as Demonstrator in Biology in the Arts College, Chennai, V.M. Mohanraj took up librarianship. And qualifying himself in the profession at the Madras University in 1951, he joined the Presidency College, Chennai, in 1955, as Additional Librarian and in 1959, got transferred as Chief Librarian to the Law College, Chennai. Thanks to the constraints of government service, he resigned from there to join The Lawrence School, Lovedale, a Public School, as Librarian and superannuated in 1989. The congenial atmosphere provided by the school helped him carry out many studies in various aspects of general reading of schoolchildren, the findings of which were published in the Herald of Library Science, Journal of Indian Education (NCERT) and Primary Teacher (NCERT). Besides publishing many papers on different topics pertaining school library organization and service in various other periodicals he has written a book, The School Library, published by the Kerala State Institute of Languages, Thiruvananthapuram, the first one on school library service to appear in Malayalam. A freelance writer, he has to his credit, five other books in Malayalam and articles in English and Malayam on various other topics. He had presented papers at many seminars on school library services and had visited myriad libraries in various states in the US to observe their working. Brief biographical sketches of his appear in the Who's Who of Today's Writers, brought out by the Kerala Sahitya Adademic, Trissur and a few other publishers.
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