I carry my library with me everywhere I go.

You may raise an eyebrow but believe it or not, it is true.

I got my library in my pocket.

I have my KJV Bible, my Oxford dictionaries; pocket English, medical, business, idioms, the thesaurus, even an Islamic Qur’an and the Nostradamus Prophecies.

I even have the novels I like to read. Treasure Island and Robinson Crusoe books are just a couple of the books in my library that I carry around.

I got a book about First Aid in it too.

All of these books and the rest that I have not mentioned fit snugly in my pocket without the burden of the weight.

Hey, wait a sec; I said “I got my library in my pocket.” not in my bag.

I’m not carrying a laptop computer, if that’s what you think. One cannot put a laptop in a pocket at the first place. It is too big and quite too heavy for comfort if ever you manage to fit it in your pocket.

Having a library in my pocket provides me much comfort in more ways than few. I can read my favorite book everywhere any time. May it be on a picnic, on board a bus going home, or laying down on a hammock swinging from a branch under the mango tree while sipping a hot  coffee mixed with a shot of brandy during week ends. If I choose to take a hike to the nearby jungle, I can listen to an audio book for hours.

Ok, ok, you might already get the picture. I am talking about one of the many powerful uses of my smartphone. » Read more: Carrying a Library in My Pocket – Smartphones For Education

INTRODUCTION

Helping children and adults to develop skills they need to fully participate in an information society is central in a librarian’s mission of providing the highest quality library and information service in society. Books help children read. They are more helpful than reading schemes because they promise and provide pleasure in reading. Both teachers and school librarians should be influential in the child’s reading process but they need good knowledge of children’s literature so that they can choose and help these young readers at all levels (Samara, 2002). The Library Association (1991) singled out four areas as being enhanced by reading and use of a variety of sources of information namely: intellectual and emotional development; language development; social development; and educational development. In view of this there is every reason for teachers and librarians to promote reading in school. What then is reading?

READING

Current attempts to define reading tend to regard it as a thinking process with attention focused on comprehension. That is to say reading is a mechanical and thoughtful process requiring the reader to understand what the author is endeavoring to communicate and to contribute his own experience and thoughts to the problem of understanding. As far back as 1913 Huey began formulating such ideas as can be noted from his frequently quoted words:

until the insidious thought of reading as word pronouncing

is well worked out of our heads, it is well to place the emphasis

strongly where it really belongs, on reading as thought-

getting independently of expression.

In 1937 Gray posited that

…the reader not only recognizes the essential facts or ideas

presented, but also reflects on their significance, evaluates them critically, discovers relationships between them, and classifies his understanding of the ideas apprehended.

Such ideas about the nature of reading continued to expand so that in 1949 Gray wrote that the reader

…does more than understand and contemplate; his emotions

are stirred; his attitudes and purposes are modified; indeed his innermost being involved.

Reading is perceived as a progressive social phenomenon in that it is a means of forming people’s social consciousness; it is used as an instrument in implementing the task of continuing education and raising pupils cultural standards. In brief it is a means of increasing professional knowledge and skills and drawing people into a more creative life. In Sierra Leone, however, the task of ensuring that children learn to read, and of finding ways of helping them to do so is one of general concern to all teachers in both primary and secondary schools. One of the reasons why teachers are eager to help pupils to learn to read is that in modern society literacy is essential. In helping children to read they will not only be able to read but that their reading will develop into life-long habit. Thus a great deal of attention in schools is paid to:

- the promotion of children’s interest in books

- the supply, deployment and classification of books

- guidance in selection of appropriate books

- training in study skills and provision of time in which to read. » Read more: Promoting Reading In Schools In Sierra Leone