Contrasting roles of school and public libraries in lower primary pupils' reading

Abstract

Libraries represent an important institutional component of children's reading socialisation, yet their role is often treated as uniform despite substantial differences between school and public libraries. This study examines how visits to school and public libraries relate to pupils' reading attitudes, practices and self-assessed reading skills, drawing on data from the Czech Republic, an environment characterised by the simultaneous and widespread presence of both types of libraries. The analysis employs ordinal logistic regression with school fixed effects using a regionally representative dataset covering 927 pupils in Grades 4 and 5 across 23 primary schools in the Opava administrative district, representing 48.6% of all pupils and 54.8% of schools in the district. The results show that visits to public libraries are systematically associated with more positive reading attitudes and higher levels of reading frequency and time spent reading, whereas no comparable associations are observed for visits to school libraries. Self-assessed reading skills are not consistently related to visits to either type of library. Additional analyses indicate that public library use is closely linked to individual and family characteristics, while school library visits are largely independent of pupils' personal and family background. Interpreted through a reading socialisation framework, these findings point to two analytically distinct patterns through which libraries relate to children's reading: a curriculum-linked, equalising pattern reinforced by (semi-)compulsory use, and a voluntary pattern shaped by family cultural resources. The study highlights the importance of recognising and supporting these complementary functions in the design of library provision.