School’s best kept secret?

ANNA MAJESTRO/Charleston Catholic

(From left) Sophomores Brittany Hoyer, Nicole Johns and Kari Soulsby in the library at Charleston Catholic High School.

By Natalie Tupta
Charleston Catholic High School

“It’s time to start thinking about your big project this semester,” your teacher begins.

You groan to yourself, thinking of all the time and effort you’re going to have to put into this. You know it’ll be some research-oriented paper on something extremely boring — like Russian serfdom or the differences between snails and slugs.

“How can I get out of this?” you ask yourself. Or, since that’s not going to happen, “How can this be made easier?”

You might start with the school library. Yes, believe it or not, that boring-looking room at school might actually contain something worth checking out.

Dara Krack, Charleston Catholic’s school librarian, certainly believes this. True, she’s a little biased, but she just might be on to something.

According to Krack, most of the students who check out books at the school are middle school students. High school students use the library more irregularly, primarily participating in class activities held there when a teacher has a special assignment.

However, Krack, who is in her ninth year as school librarian, believes this is changing. She said that over the years, she has seen a slow increase in library usage by high school students.

“I’ve been trying to make it known that the library is open,” she said.

It may also help to make students aware that the library has other handy uses besides simply checking out books. For example, some students come in after school to tutor each other. Others come to use the copy machine. Still others use the computers and/or the quiet setting to finish up homework before school or during lunch.

With Internet use becoming more common among teenagers, many students just head to the computer to find information. One good site for research, easily accessible from school libraries, is that of the Kanawha County Public Library (www.kanawha.lib.us).

There you can find articles and files on a wide variety of topics, and the citations for these sources are included on the page. The site also contains a live homework help option in a variety of subjects.

Although some might find it nerdy, outdated or boring, the library can still be an extremely useful resource for all things school-related. So whether you’re bored and looking for a good book to read or you’ve procrastinated and need to type up an assignment in a jiffy, the library might end up being a good friend.