Between 1997-1999 a first phase of the Library Practice for Young learners was conducted in all nine provinces of South Africa. Three developments profoundly influenced the conceptual design of the project and its unique response to the need for school library development in South Africa.

Phase two between 2000-2001 provide the foundations after following principles 

One of the six strategic objectives is the study tour with its objective to change ideas and experiences between Swedish and South African practitioners about i) ways of defining and increasing library-related resources for school learners and educators, and ii) strategies for implementing a school library plan, networking and lobbying at a local level.

The Swedish librarians met the Swedish working group for a preparatory seminar in Stockholm 29-30^th of Sept. We received some information about South African history and daily situation and life. We also informed and discussed with each other about our project plans.

The nine Swedish librarians met the South African participants from every project school during a weekend seminar 28^th-29^th of October in Johannesburg. We listened to interesting speech by Andrew Pattersson about School Library statistics in South Africa. 

We also listened to reports from the project schools in Free State, Western Cape and Northern Cape which no one of us would visit during our study tours.

Mrs June Matlala from NCETDE talked about Library policy and plan development.

In the afternoon of 19^th of oct. The Swedish group split into three groups.

Swedish participants: Maria Bergstrand, Anna Birgitta Eriksson and Helene Swenne.

Study tour leader: Mrs. Nomvuku Nomnga, Department of Social Services, Arts, Culture and Sport, assisted by Mrs. Gloria Pitso, teacher librarian of E P Lekhela Primary School. Mrs. Maureen Bopape and Mrs. Gomani, media advisors of the Department of Education of the North West Province and responsible for 500 schools, also joined in for the visits to the schools. 

We started by visiting schools in the Mmabatho/Mafikeng area. The first one is situated at some distance from the cities.

Mogosane Combined School
The school is situated in a rural area where the distance between the houses is long. It was easy to understand that many learners have a long way to go to school. The whole school, including the head master Mrs. Silvia Bosilong, gathered in the schoolyard to greet us with singing, reading aloud and speeches. One of the boys pointed out a problem felt by the learners, that of not being allowed to borrow books from the school library and bring them home to read.

Mrs. Rita Mantlana, the teacher librarian, told us that the library had been installed three months ago by two American volunteers. The staff room was taken to make it. The shelves were built from bricks wrapped in paper and metal shelves. The collection was essentially built up with a donation of R3.500 and bought from the READ organisation. Most of the books are in English but there are also books in Sesotho and Zulu. The books could be read in the library or be taken to the classrooms.

A vision was pronounced as to enlarge the library and open it to the public outside the school.

The following visits were made to schools in the city of Mmabatho.

Connie Minchin School
This school is a big one with more than 1,000 learners. It looks wealthy. Inside the fences there are big lawns, trees and flowers. The school used to be a white one, but as black children started to come most of the white children moved out. The school has a multi-cultural context.

We only visited the library at this school. The library is big and well equipped: books, video, radio, etc, although many of the books were old and very worn. No books had been bought during the recent years. Mrs. Oosthuizen, the librarian, told us about projects that had been accomplished and ongoing ones, about ways to work, i.e. the OBE-support, and ideas. It was obvious that the library was a very active one. Posters, drawings, pictures, and texts displayed in different ways gave evidence to what Mrs Oosthuizen told us about. She had also made simple and pedagogic guides to the use of the library. We found the work done in the library and the enthusiasm and the creativity of its librarian quite impressing. She also expressed a want to play a role in the education of the teacher librarians. 

Diphetogo Primary School
Here the teachers and the head master, Mrs. Dipuo Mocumi, were gathered in the staff room to present their work to us. In the library there was a TV-set apart from books. An elephant made of publicity stuff was placed there waiting to be used for fund raising. Like in other schools that we visited the Sunday Times supplement was used to make reading material for the children. The books could be borrowed and taken home by the learners. At the beginning there had been problems with books not coming back, but then the school made the parents buy these books, and this solved the problem. The parents are engaged in the library and have given books to the collection. They are also represented in the library committee, consisting of 6 persons.

E P Lekhela Primary School
This school is the project school that has taken part in the Library Practice for Young Learners project. It has 735 learners and 21 teachers. Here we met teacher librarians from schools in the neighbourhood as well as from the schools that we had already visited. In absence of the headmaster, the meeting was lead by the head of the School Governing Body, Mr Sesokho. Children of the school read aloud and sang - among others no less than three library songs - conducted by Mrs.Gloria Pitso, who is also responsible of the school library in the absence of Mrs. Mosiane. After speeches and discussions we visited the library - rather small but nicely installed and where all books were presented showing the front cover. The library is still too small to allow the learners to borrow books to take home to read. As a result of Mrs. Mosiane's visit to Sweden, a little studio had been installed and talking books produced by the school. Among the visions presented was the want to computerise and to build a new house for an enlarged library that would also be open to the public.

At the end of this visit we had lunch made up by traditional food that was very nice. In the evening we visited Mrs. Mosiane in her home and recieved a freshly written library policy document for the school library.

North West Provincial Library Services 
and Mmabatho Public Library
Here Mr. E.M. Atubra, acting deputy director, received us to tell about the work and the premises. After a recent decision, the provincial library is no longer responsible of the school libraries. However, the collaboration between the culture and the school departments continues (waiting for the elections to come in December 2000). This means that the organisation of the provincial library is still used to buy, prepare and transport books to the school libraries in the province and not only to the public libraries. The public library administration includes four regional libraries and 110 local service points. The main function of the provincial library is to administrate the purchase of books and other necessities for the public libraries and train the staff, whereas the different communities provide housing and staff. The library is now being computerised..

The Mmabatho Public Library is part of the provincial library. Before the opening for the day at 10 a m there was a line of students waiting to come in. The library seemed well equipped with books and reading rooms.

The Mafikeng Museum
The city of Mmabatho is today considered as a part of the city of Mafikeng, and Mafikeng was earlier the capital of Botswana. It has been the scene of action in many historic events in South Africa, i.e. the Boer war. The Mafikeng Museum is an historical and anthropological museum. Mr Philips, who runs the museum with the aid of a receptionist and a cleaning woman, told us about their work. One big task is to rearrange the display to show a true version of the history based on facts instead of the white propagandistic versions that were available earlier. Another big task is to receive schools (not school classes) to guide the learners through their history. These visits usually takes place on Fridays, and since there are so many children coming at a time - often 200 learners - the visits are organised so that the teachers come in first to have a quick orientation of the relevant displays. Then the group of children is split into smaller groups, and the teachers do the guiding. Mr. Philips told us that often the schools had difficulties in coming on the appointed hour. This lead to much improvisation, and one Friday more than 1,000 children had been received!

Apart from the salaries and the rent the museum has no budget. Under the present circumstances, everything had to be done by the staff. One big wish was to engage an educational officer to organise the work with the schools.

Ga-Rankuwa Childrens Library
The last one of the libraries visited in the North West Province was to the Ga-Rankuwa Childrens Library, west of Pretoria. The children's library forms part of the library of the tecnicon but is open to all children of the village. The library is big and well equipped. The librarian, Mr. Darius Selkiane, told us about the activities of the library, which we found are very much like those of a children's library in Sweden, with story hours, collaboration with the surrounding schools, etc.

Study tour leader: Mrs. Busi Dlamini, Gauteng Department of Education

Gauteng Province unique; 2002 schools –more than 1.000 in the disadvantaged area. The following libraries and schools are all situated in Soweto, Johannesburg.

A B Xuma School 
This first visit was to one of the project school libraries. Mrs. Mpumi Kamango is the teacher librarian. The teachers had prepared a wonderful program conducted by some learners with singing and telling stories, followed by an informal conversation with some very dedicated teachers.

The school has 750 learners and 19 educators. A new library was built up in1996/97. It consists of a library room and a reading room. In the library classroom boxes are prepared. There is also a computer room close. 

There is a timetable for use of library. Grade 4-7 can borrow books to take home to read (not grade 1-3)

The budget from the department is 8.000 R. Orlando Public library donates some material. Some resources are shared, and activities are exchanged. A librarian from Orlando Public. library comes to tell stories regularly. Xuma also network with other schools. They also want to involve the parents more with the library.

There has been a Workshop with librarians for in-service training with 18 teachers participating.

The Central policy gives guidelines whereas the local school forms the plan for further development of the library.

Lofentse Girl High
A group of teacher librarians from different schools were gathered in the library. Mrs. Mabel Letsoalo, the librarian, opened up the session with a beautiful speech on "the African renaissance". Two participants of the READ-program talked about their ideas and ways to work.

Several of the teacher librarians shared their experiences of creative and innovative ways of making learning materials as well as of fundraising, taking all the opportunities and using all occasions one could think of. One of the teacher librarians meant that this work is only possible to do up to a certain point, though, if you do not have any realistic hope to get better resources.

Mrs. Letsoalo stressed the importance to make the connection clear between the general results of the school and the role of the library. She works actively to prepare the learners for different contests, and points out that the good results they have obtained reflects that they have access to a good library.

Mrs. Letsoalo also gives library education to all learners of the school. This follows a well planned step-by-step structure. She also teaches how to do research and communicate.

Workshop with teacher librarians: 15 schools, 2 teachers/school participates. The aim is to teach teachers how to organise the library, classification etc. There are 4 session per quarter.

This passionate dedication, that we have seen in mrs. Letsoalo and in other librarians and teacher librarians made a very deep impression on us.

Orlando Comunity Library
Serves also as Community Information Centre with "Welfare Information", quick reference section and study room – there is need for an extra study room - and a Children’s section that pre schools can visit. They have a working relationship with surrounding schools. Most schools around have no functional school libraries. 

The teachers give their topics for the coming semester. The library gives block loans to schools for a period of 3-6 weeks.

The learners can take home books. 

Here we had the opportunity to meet Mrs. Maldrathini, head of 5 libraries, and Mrs Ntelemeza, the responsible of Orlando Community Library, together with some teacher librarians and pre-school teachers. The topics that we discussed were again how to make the most with small resources, and where to look for sponsors.

Main Education Library, Pretoria /mobile library
This library provides resources to educators. There is an Educator collection and a Learner collection containing not only books but audio visual material: 12.000 posters, videos, transparencies etc. and periodicals, about 300 titles.

There will be 12 districts, and there is a need for satellite education libraries in all districts. Now there are Teacher Centers in some of them, of which 2-3 have library advisors. The recommendation will be that each district has a person responsible of library policy and one person to run the district library and to organise development and training for the staff.

The Main Education Library has a mobile library service for rural/farm schools. The existing two buses are sponsored by a Japanese company. We had the opportunity to go with Mrs. Hester Nel, librarian, and Mr. Lekau Mmamabolo, librarian of the mobile library, to a farm school. It was a multi-cultural school with 360 learners (built for 150) and 10 educators. Some of the teachers had told what they needed in advance, others choose from what the librarians had exposed on the bus in a very attractive way. This is considered an expensive service, but as we could see very highly appreciated by the learners. One school class had written letters to the mobile-library, that were pure love letters!

Swedish participants: Cecilia Flodström, Maud Hell and Eva Petri

South African participants: Busi Ndawo from the National Department of Education and Bring Mathebula, teacher librarian from Makhuva, Northern Province

29 October
Flight from Johannesburg to Pietersburg, where a hired car was collected. 

Dinner in Pietersburg
In the evening we had dinner with Mrs J. Tshidi Makholfolo, Deputy Director of Northern Province Library Services, Department of Sports, Arts and Culture and Mr Gustav Mahapa, Department of Education and Technology, Pietersburg.

We exchanged information about school library practices in our countries and discussed different ways of solving school library problems in a province like Northern Province with vast distances and a large amount of schools (5000) with lack of sufficient resources. Mr Mahapa told us about his work with the school library plans for a limited number of schools to begin with. The plan was to try to implement mobile book boxes and employ a media advisor to work with the scheme in the province. Bring Mathebula was pleased to hear that his school might be able to get such resources in the future.

Another important subject in our discussion was how to divide the responsibility between the Educational and the Cultural departments of the province, concerning the project of Makhuva Information Centre. Maybe it was not easy for us to understand this, but we got the impression that this meeting was important for sorting out things. It seemed as if the Cultural Department, the TLC and the Educational Department could continue to be co-operating parts of the project in different ways.

30 October
The visit to Makhuva Community Information Centre (MACIC)
The Makhuva Community Information Centre is located 65 km from the city of Giyani in a rural area. It practices a combined community and school library model. Although this is clearly beneficial for the community it also creates problems in terms of which Department should take responsibility for its sustainability. The staff consists of volunteers that follow the plans set up of the Executive Committee and the Library Committee. There is also a relationship with the Palaborwa Foundation, which assists the centre in formulating development plans, providing library training courses and money for the building of a library hall. The Information Centre offers surrounding schools resources and support, both books and software programmes. As soon as the telephone link is working the seven computers in the library will be connected to the internet.

At MACIC there were many representatives for different parts involved in the project present and a program was prepared for us. Speeches were held by representatives from the TLC, from the staff, from the Department of Sports, Arts and Culture, from the Phalaborwa foundation and from the teachers. The Tribal Office was also represented, the Chief had made it possible to build the centre. All were very positive and supported the aims of the centre and said that they would assist it. A member of an American development project worked with the centre, Sweden and Japan has also been involved.

The centre seemed to be a most valuable project for the community managed as it was in co-operation by several interest groups. It assisted the citizens in different ways, the computer courses and news letter were popular, especially among the youth and the teachers. With some enhancement in resources like staffing, a phone line, Internet Connection this could be a Community Library of great use as an Information Centre for the citizens of Makhuva and maybe serve as a model for South Africa.

At the centre we were served a traditional meal before we said goodbye to everyone including Bring Mathebula and left for our next visit:

Tsonga Kraal Mr Mabasa accompanied us to the open air museum Tsonga Kraal. It was very interesting to hear a member of the Tsonga tribe talk about the old traditions, iron smelting, handicrafts and habits. Traditionally dressed persons worked at the museum showing traditional handicraft and music. The museum invites school classes to come and study their history in this Tsonga village.

Giyani Library 
Though we were late three persons from the staff were waiting for us at Gyiani Public Library or as they would rather call it: Community Library, implying that ALL members of the community, including the schools, should be encouraged to use and benefit from the library services. The library is a provincial library in the area with 7 branch libraries. Their opening hours were 8.30-16.30 on weekdays and they were planning to open on Saturdays too. 

Staff: two assistants employed by the community and two volunteers of which one, Portia, was a professional librarian. We heard about their work with trying to get the schools, teachers and learners, to come to the library. They were going to try block loans for the schools to get the books more used for the children learning to read. In their library work with school children they have good help from co-operation with READ Education Trust and The US Peace Corps.  

31 October 
The group of four left early in the morning to be able to reach Malelane in Mpumalanga at noon. This was not possible, though we drove as fast as we could. With the help of Mr Johan Lushaba from the district office we finally found our way to: 

DD Mabuza Comprehensive High School 
The Principal Mr Aron Mbatha and the teacher Mr F. Mtembu were waiting for us. Unfortunately the other teachers and learners had had to leave, since we were very late. The school is new, built in 1999, with fine modern buildings and is planned to become a good equipped high school with technical alignment and they wished to be an educational centre for the whole southern Africa. Soon they expected to get computers for their computer room and planned to have a computer centre there. Computers should be donated from Finland. Unfortunately security was a big problem and the school was forced to make extensive plans for this. 

The school got some funding from the government, but since it was a new school with comparatively high standard, they now had to raise money sponsors like companies, NGO:s and foundations. They also charged a high school fee.

They had 450 learners in grade 8 and 9 and were planning to have up to grade 12. Learners come from a long distance – up to 40 km. They come with job-buses early in the morning, with taxi or trucks. The school is situated near the border an has a high percentage of refugees in the area. Some children came from Mozambique and Swaziland. The children often come from split families, parents have to look for work.. The school had some discipline problems. Many families could not pay the school fee. 

The school library, which was not yet in use, was a big room with shelves where the donated books were about to be processed. They were donated from England, via the Educational Department. They had got some help from an American volunteer to process books. Now a person came some times a week and helped with this. Some of the books seemed maybe not well suited for the age of the children. All the educators were co-operating in making the library ready besides their ordinary working hour. 

In the future they hoped that the library could serve the surrounding community too.

The school had cultural and agricultural activities. They had had a Cultural Day with Ndebele dances. Horticultural teachers from the project Trees for Africa had been working with the school.

1 November 
Next district was Witbank, where Sam Ndawo, former library advisor of the province, joined the group in Ogies for the visit to two schools in Phola Location. The first was

Siyathokoza Primary School 
When we came to this new school, started in 1999, we could read "Knowledge enlightens" written with white stones in big letters on the ground outside. The name of the school means "We thank you" in Ndebele and "We are happy" in Zulu. 

The educators in this school are reemployed from other schools. They appeared to have good team work and good contact with parents.

The teacher that hoped to be teacher librarian Ms Busi Ndlovo showed us what was going to be the library. Shelves and furniture had just been placed in a room and an exhibition of books an items were prepared. The principal and resource manager Mr Obet Skosana welcomed us and Ms Ndlovo talked about the school. They have 600 learners in grade 1-5 and are in a foundation phase to have pre-school: grade R – reception year. They were planning to have grade 6 too. The school was a "section 21"-school, which means that they got extra resources because the needs were so big in their area. 40 of the 231 schools of Witbank were "section 21"-schools.

They were going to form a library committee with the members of the former media committee. They had several committees in the school. 80 % of the children were disadvantaged from informal settlements and the school had a feeding scheme so that some of them could get porridge and beans to eat at school so that they should not be hungry and be able to learn. 

We met many laughing children at Siyathokoza Primary! They sang for us and tried to spell the name of the foreign, distant country that we came from. In one of the classes Maud left letters from her school in Sweden, hoping to get some answers from them.

From Siyathokoza we went to the nearby

Melhwana High School 
The school opened in 1991 and was built by Eskom Company in this disadvantaged area. The buildings with 29 classrooms and 9 specialized centres seemed very modern and suitable. It was a great experience to meet so many engaged teachers, the principal Mr M.M. Ngwenya, former priest and also a teacher of music and the ambitious and hard working teacher librarian Ms Mathandi Mokomo and the learners. We were very honoured guests in the library, where many learners and teachers assembled to meet us. Representatives for the mining company, for the school district, the Educational Department of the province and of South Africa were present too, all supporting the efforts of the school. 

The library was situated in a big light room. On the shelves were not only books, but also objects like model houses and other artefacts to borrow for the education. A plan was written and they wanted the library to be an effective information centre. 

The vision of the school library is: 
"To be a learning and resource centre for educators and learners that will equip them with reference material that will benefit them life long." 

And the mission statement is:
"Educate the child in totality who in the nearby future will be a productive citizen."

Ms Mokomo talked about beeing motivated by the booklet "Fifteen innovative ways with your learning resources". She told us about the efforts to make the school library a well functioning part of the education in this school. Many problems with security was mentioned here too. They had earlier got assistance from Britain, USA and Finland with books, computer centre and training. 

We heard both from Ms Mokomo and in speeches by two of the learners about the needs and the problems of the school. One of the representatives from the mine referred to the AIDS problem in his speech. After the visit we could see for ourselves how many of the poor children live, when we had the opportunity to follow three of the girls to their homes. This experience and the song of the school choir and the dance of the groups of girls in Ndbele-inspired clothes were some of the most memorable moments of our travel. It seemed that this school could be a place where the children can go and learn for life and maybe be able to change their situation. We hope to be able to keep the contact with Mehlwana High, maybe a twinning project with a school in Sweden (Lund?) could be established.

Swedish participants: Tina Haglund, Karin Westberg and Malin Ogland.

SA participants: Jan Beeton, Pat Magwaza(KZN) and Melrose Makongwana (EC).

30 October 
KwaZulu-Natal
Two schools in The Valley of 1000 Hills

Inkazimulo Primary School (Ikhwezi Resource Centre)
We met Mr Paul Govender, the headmaster, and Ms Lungile Dube, the librarian. 

The Resource Center is a multipurpose centre with library, computers and copymachines. The centre serves teachers, learners and adults from the area. The opening hours are between 8 and 16 in the afternoon and sometimes the library is open on weekends for special activities.

The library: due to difficulties with transportation schools and people don’t use the library of the centre very much with some distance to the centre. There is a fee of 10 Rand/year for personal loans and that also limits the use of the books. Block loans for schools are free. 

They have no allocation for buying books and they haven’t been able to buy books for the last three years. The government collected all of their books about a year ago and put them into libraries with much more need. The centre still has books that are their own and they also uses papers a lot and Sunday Times Supplement Read Right.

Many students living close to the library work and study there every day after school, but the students living far away haven’t the same possibility.

The library have a TV and a video for lending for shools interested in children education programs. They didn’t have any videos on loan.

The library has holiday programs for learners. To get the learners interesting in reading they were invited to a video show and after the show the books are in focus.

The computers: The centre has many computers and they are going to start elementary computer education for teachers and adults in the area. They have also offered the students to study computers on weekends, but the interest wasn’t so high. For a small cost you could use the computers for work and study and some computers were used while we were visiting.

The copymachines: This facility was used a lot by the schools.

Networking: The centre produce a newsletter in zulu for children and their families where they can read about the holiday programs, the importance of reading, road safety etc. The newsletter is free and comes every 3^rd month. Principals in the area have meetings when they discuss the centre. The centre has an agreement with a local private school that helps them with the computers for free. 

Library plan – there is none. The centre was closed when the new headmaster came for three years ago. He gathered the surrounding schools principals and they decided to open the centre again. No school in the area has a library. There are 21 schools and 10.000 children!

Summary: A well managed resource center and the staff are very interested in development, but have difficulties due to transportation problems, communication problems, lack of money and lack of appropriate books. They have plans for the future but no written plans.

Kwa Thintwa School for the Deaf 
We met Ms Dolly Cain, a teacher working part time in the library and part time as a teacher. She was interesting in library questions but didn’t have librarytraing and wished they could employ a trained librarian. We also met Ms P Octavia Xulu and Mrs C Mntambo the principal

The school was in very good condition with a well-organised library and very nice surroundings. They even had a computer and connection with the Internet. We got a picture by e-mail from our visit!

The school is a boarding school with 250 learners from 3 to 16 years old. All the children were deaf and some were going blind. 

They didn’t have a library plan on paper, but in their minds. Wishes were to have a full time trained librarian. They believed that the library is very important for the education. For the reading process and for teaching the learners to find information. They needed more easy reading books suiting the children.

All classes are booked for library visits on a timetable. The class teacher follows and helps the learners to find their way in the library. 

The learners makes their own pictionaries and they also use The Sunday Times Read Right. All children were trained in sign language and we got the opportunity to meet some learners that used the sign language in a nice performance.

Summary: A very well managed school with a great interest in library development and in the best of their students. They were worried about the new rules of the school government body and having new members in the board without any experience of education and no developed culture of learning and not knowing how to take fund raising contacts. 

Msinga High
Before the visit we had read an earlier report written in June 2000 by Jenni Karlsson. She wrote that the district of Msinga was ranked as the poorest in the province in 1995. Only 20% of the adults are formally employed and families continue to be dependent on income from adult males who work as migrant labourers. Msinga is among the deep rural districts in KwaZulu-Natal that "have historically been denied resources under apartheid and the homeland system…"

The library manager, Ms Jabu Dlamini welcomed us in a very nice way and showed us the adjacent junior primary school, 

Mkhuphulangwenya, and the library at Msinga high.
The adjacent school had many problems like lack of furniture for the learners and books that had been stolen. The door to the classroom, where the library cabinet is, was damaged by burglars and hadn’t been repaired since that. The staff we met at the junior school is very much in need and Jabu tried to help them through her experience and the contact with us. Is it possible to train local adults to make furniture? A new schoolhouse was going to be built, but the builders had left the work two years ago because lack of money. It seemed hopeless.

The library cabinet had some reading resources, easy readers and pamphlets on career education. There was no electricity and the floor was soil

Msinga School is a boarding school for grades 8 to 12. Less than 50% of the learners in grade 12 passed the senior certificate examination in 1999 according to Jenni Karlssons report. There were signs of decay, a lot of windows were broken and the surroundings was in poor condition with a lot of litter etc.

The library at Msinga high was well organised and Ms Jabu greeted us very nice. 

We only met Ms Jabu and one teacher that happened to be there over the day because of the examinations. He was very interested in library development.

Library plan – they don’t have any plan, but Jabu was inspired during the seminar in Johannesburg and she is going to start working on a plan. The closest public library is in Greytown and Jabu has no network. She’s trying to build one together with the adjacent school, Mkhuphulangwenya. The media adviser is also very far away. The network is very limited and the library committee isn’t very active.

Summary: Jan Beeton promised to help the principal at the Mkhuphulangwenya school, Mrs Thembi Ntombela to work with fund raising. They really need help.

Msinga high schools library is nice, but it seems very hard to work in this area with no support from the school management and the teachers. Only a few of them used the library and understood the importance of using it.

Velabahleke High School 
A very well managed school and library. The school had more than 20 classes, 1302 learners and 27 teachers. It’s a public school with no fee. They had between 65-70 learners per lesson and the result of the school was fantastic. 97-100% of the learners passed the senior certificate examination and the school had won lots of prizes.

The library was very well managed. The librarian, Ms. Latha Singh

was also a teacher and she had two assistants that worked in the library. They had got many books by donators in U.K. and United States. They were aware of that the books were wrong for the students, because they didn’t represent their own culture, but English and American culture. They wanted to buy books printed in South Africa but had no money. They had managed to buy African history. The library allocation seased two years ago.

Papers were used a lot. One of the assistants, Sybil Dumakude had made books by collecting articles on various subjects like HIV and aids, Nelson Mandela, Lady Diana, Mother Theresa, Sports, Nature, Environment etc. This home-made books were well used. We also saw many small exhibitions in the library. For instance over politicians, legislation, aids etc. There were also many educating posters on the importance of reading and books.

The library was in a former classroom, but there were plans on moving it to a more central place in the building with lots of more space. (Close to the entrance)

Summary: A very well managed library and school with a staff that is very interested in development. The spirit of the school was fantastic both in the meeting with teachers, principals, library assistants and learners. 

Umlazi Public Library
Mr. Themba Mkhize showed us the nice and vivid library. The library had 500-2000 loans/day and was very frequently used. We saw learners everywhere studying for their exams. 

One new thing was a community info link where you could find info about the community in a computer. The library bought this information from a central resource. It was a pilot project and all functions were not in use yet. You could for instance get information about jobs, schools, political decisions etc.

The library was divided in different areas like young readers, adults etc. The fiction was divided in different shelves like fantasy, African authors, crime, easy readers etc. There were a lot of encyclopaedias that was well used by the learners.

We saw literature both in English and in zulu and many papers and magazines.

They had some programs for learners when the schools were closed, but not regularly because the lack of staff. Outside the library, in the same building, there were rooms for other activities like studying and in one room there was a doctor examine young children. 

Summary: A very well managed library. It was amazing to see all the learners studying everywhere and how well used the library seemed to be.

Bantwanana Junior Secondary School 
A short visit to a small school with tiny resources. We only spoke to some teachers and they showed us the small library, a cabinet with a few books. 

KwaNtshunqe Junior Secondary School and school library – a project school. 
We had a very warm welcome from the whole community and were treated with music, traditional dance and a very tasty meal. 

After the lunch Viceroy showed all his library filled with books, talking books and lots of educating posters and exhibitions. Viceroy has done very well and he has started workshops around the area. His library seems welknown and we got the impression that other schools wants to develop their libraries in the same way.

Summary: A very well managed school and a library with lots of different material. All the staff at school seems to be involved and were using the library. Also the community chiefs were interested and proud of the school and the school library.

Zwelenqaba school library 
A school close to Viceroys school. He had started to build up a library with small resources. There wasn’t many books, but it’s a good start. Unfortunately there had been some damage to the building the night before our visit and some windows were broken the electricity was damaged.

Mhlabunzima Junior Secondary School 
We had a very long drive and unfortunately we arrived very late to this well managed school. The welcome was fantastic and one of the chiefs knew some Swedish! We were invited to take part in traditional dance, and the choir made performances.

The meeting was held in the library and later on we got the possibility to visit a classroom with a fantastic exhibition of the learners work with recycled material. Because lack of money there was no electricity on, so we couldn’t stay so long.

The library had bookshelves made out of boxes and there were many books in good condition. The school had 681 learners and 54-81 learners in each class.

Summary: A very well managed school with a great interest in development and in the library.

Umtata Public Library 
In the evening we were invited to a braai (barbecue) at the public library. The welcome was very warm with lots of speeches, performances by learners and a very good meal.

The library had 1000 visitors/day and 500 loans/day.

Prepared by Malin Ögland

Summary from the seminar in Johannesburg 3/11 2000