DDSB employee awarded by Ontario Library Association

By Dave Flaherty/The Oshawa Express

For Richard Reid, school libraries are the epicentre of  “inquiry, wonder and creativity.”

It is this type of vision that assisted Reid in winning the Ontario Library Association’s  2018 Larry Moore Distinguished Service Award.

The award bestows honourary life membership with the OLA for a member who has “made an outstanding contribution to the libraries of Ontario”.

Reid has served as the innovation education facilitator for libraries with the Durham District School Board (DDSB) for the past five years.

“I’ve had the best five years in this job. It’s a huge honour that the colleagues that I work with every day reached out to the association,” Reid told The Oshawa Express.

“The list of people who have received the award, it’s a powerful list of librarians,” he adds.

In his position with the school board, Reid’s main responsibility is providing support of school librarians and learning commons.

While he concedes the role of libraries has lessened in some areas of the province, that is not the case in local schools.

“We have one teacher-librarian at every elementary school. We are really in a good position in Durham because there isn’t times when our libraries aren’t staffed,” he says.

Although the teacher-librarian role is not a new concept, its importance in the overall success of a school has grown as the education curriculum evolves, Reid notes.

“We want our teacher-librarians to be a catalyst of change of how we teach and learn, and the catalyst for making students question things and wonder,” he says.

For him, teacher-librarians are also “key players” in ensuring schools are able to access the resources that go hand-in-hand with “inquiry-based learning”.

A 2011 study by Queens’ University and People for Education, a public education advocacy organization, studied the importance of teacher-librarians.

“It found that in schools with teacher-librarians, students were more likely to report that they ‘like to read’,” Reid states. “The study also found a significant relationship between students’ scores on reading and writing tests and the presence of either a teacher–librarian or a library technician.”

Even though technology such as tablets and laptops now play a significant role in education, Reid says books and other traditional reading materials must also remain essential.

“I think it is important that we recognize the traditional aspects of libraries as well. It’s a delicate balance,” he says. “They are the hub of our school community.”