+44 (0) 1273 386849School Libraries in 2026: Preparing for Futures That We Cannot Predict
Here we are again. Somehow, we are already more than halfway through the year.
For those of us working in and around school libraries in 2026, this point in the year always feels slightly strange. One school year has ended, while another is already beginning to appear on the horizon. There are things to finish, things we meant to do and didn’t quite get to, and things we’re already thinking about for September.
It is also a useful moment to pause.
Looking back at the subjects I’ve explored on Simple Little Library System since January, they seem, at first, a rather mixed collection. We’ve talked about school library funding and children’s privacy, AI and information literacy, reading culture and reading logs. We’ve looked at early literacy, writing, school policies, library systems, careers information and exam results.
That’s quite a lot for half a year. But seen together, there is a thread running through much of it:
We prepare for futures we cannot predict.
How school libraries in 2026 Prepare Children for the Future
Back in January, I started the year by looking at new funding for UK school libraries. My focus was on capitalising on an opportunity – looking beyond simply buying more books and asking what could be built that would be useful and sustainable.
Then came children’s privacy and data protection in school libraries. This, too, is work we do in advance. We think carefully about the information we collect and the systems we use because protecting children’s privacy matters before there is a problem, not just afterwards.
In February, I wrote about why libraries still matter in a world where GenAI answers can seem to be enough. The point wasn’t that librarians somehow need to compete with AI by knowing more things. Young people need the skills to ask better questions, evaluate what they receive and recognise when a plausible-looking answer may not be a reliable one.
We don’t know exactly when those skills will be needed, but we know they will be. Perhaps that is one of the less visible functions of a school library: putting things in place whose usefulness may only become apparent later.
Building a Reading Culture Takes Time
Reading has, unsurprisingly, featured heavily this year too. For World Book Day, I wrote about why World Book Day is a moment, but reading culture is for life. Later, I questioned whether reading logs, book lists and challenges always help reading motivation.
The two are closely connected. We can create activities around reading. We can provide books, recommend, display, talk, encourage and make space. We can introduce children to writers and stories they might never otherwise encounter.
What we can’t do is manufacture a reader.
A reading culture is built through hundreds of small encounters: a recommendation from somebody who knows your taste; being allowed to abandon a book you hate; seeing someone else absorbed in something; finding a graphic novel when you thought books weren’t really for you; having time to browse without being directed towards the shelf containing books at your ‘level’.
Some of those encounters will lead nowhere. Others, excitingly, may matter far more than we ever know.
That was also behind my summer question to school librarians: what did you do today that made you read? If we want children to see reading as something bigger than a school task, it helps to remember for ourselves what reading looks and feels like beyond those structures.
The same is true of writing. For National Writing Day, I looked at ways libraries can help young people find their creative voice. We can provide the prompt, the space, the encouragement and the opportunity to discover that they have something they want to say.
What they do with that opportunity is up to them.
Preparing for the Future Doesn't Mean Predicting It
This idea has been playing on my mind outside the library too.
This year hasn’t unfolded quite as I expected. I’ve had to adjust plans, watch resources more carefully and become rather more interested in what I can do now that might make life easier later.
My vegetable garden has provided a particularly literal version of the lesson. You plant things with a plan in mind. Then weather, water, pests and the plants themselves have their own opinions. Some things struggle. Others produce far more than you could possibly have anticipated.
At some point, you have to stop thinking about the garden you planned and pay attention to the garden you’ve actually got.
There is something in that for school libraries in 2026.
Preparing children for the future cannot mean deciding in advance exactly what that future will look like. We don’t know what jobs today’s pupils will eventually do. We don’t know how AI will change the way they study, work or find information. We don’t know which books will speak to them, which interests will stick, which exam result might change a plan or which question they will suddenly need help answering.
That is partly why I found myself writing this year about how school libraries can stay grounded when school policies change. Policies change. Initiatives come and go. Technologies certainly don’t stand still. We cannot prepare by trying to predict every development correctly.
Instead, our preparation has to leave room for uncertainty: being open to change and, perhaps most importantly, paying attention to the children and young people actually in front of us rather than the imaginary ones our policies and plans were designed around.
Why School Library Impact Can Be Difficult to Measure
This brings me to one of the perennial difficulties for school libraries: demonstrating value.
Of course we should collect evidence. We should know how our libraries are being used, what is being borrowed, who is participating and whether what we’re doing is having the effect we hoped it would.
But not everything important happens on a timescale that is convenient to measure. A book loan can be counted. What happens because somebody read that book is much harder.
This became particularly obvious while writing about the role of school libraries during exam results season.
Careers information may have been sitting on a shelf or website for months. Then results arrive, and a young person suddenly needs to know what happens next. What are my options? Is there another route? Where can I find information I can trust?
The library doesn’t have to determine that young person’s future. Its value may lie in making sure there are options to explore when the question arises.
The same principle applies elsewhere. A conversation about checking an AI-generated answer might not produce an observable outcome that afternoon. It might simply leave a small but important question in someone’s mind: How do I know this is true?
Early literacy support may contribute to something that develops over years. A welcoming school library catalogue might lead somebody towards a book, subject or voice they didn’t know was there.
None of this gives us permission to claim vague future benefits whenever we cannot demonstrate present ones. Libraries need evidence; funding decisions need evidence too. But we should be careful not to confuse what we can easily count with everything that counts.
Why School Library Impact Can Be Difficult to Measure
Some of the most practical subjects I’ve covered this year might seem a long way from questions about children’s futures. I’ve written about what to look for in a school library management system and what school library management systems actually cost.
Not exactly the stuff of inspirational library posters.
But this is infrastructure, and infrastructure matters. A good library management system isn’t the purpose of a library. Neither is a sensible budget, a well-maintained OPAC or a sensible set of procedures.
When that infrastructure works, it leaves room for the more human parts of library work. A child can find something. A librarian has more time to help someone. Information is protected. Resources are discoverable. Money can be spent where it will make a difference.
Often, the best infrastructure is barely noticed, and there is something reassuringly ordinary about that.
Not every valuable thing a school library does needs to become a dramatic story about changing a life. Sometimes the library is simply there: somewhere to read and ask questions, somewhere to explore an idea, find reliable information or discover an option you hadn’t considered.
There is value in being reliably there.
What Can We Put In Place Now for the Next School Year?
And finally, one of the last pieces I wrote before this reflection was an end-of-year library health check: ten things future you will thank you for.
If this year has reminded me of anything, it is that plans are useful, but reality rarely feels obliged to follow them. Preparedness isn’t about predicting what will happen. It’s about having enough in reserve to respond when it does.
So, as we head towards a new school year, perhaps the question is simply:
What are we putting in place now that gives our children more possibilities later?
Knowledge and skills. Choices and opportunities. People and places to turn to. None guarantees an easy future, but all give us something to work with when the unexpected arrives.
Our job isn’t to predict the future. It’s to make sure our children are ready to meet it – with better questions, knowledge and wisdom in their back pockets, and the confidence to find their own way forward.
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