Kinston High School media coordinator Sara Levin shows some of the library’s updated non-fiction collection. More new books are coming to KHS thanks to a $5,000 grant awarded by the Laura Bush Foundation for America’s Libraries.

Many of the books shelved in the history section of the media center at Kinston High School are historical in their own right – that is, they are old, of a bygone era.

“We still have books on our shelf from Grainger High,” Kinston High media coordinator Sara Levin said, referring to the predecessor of the current high school, which was completed in 1979.

Those outdated books and others like them are coming off the shelf – relegated to the dustbin of history, as it were – to make room for nearly 300 new books to be purchased with a $5,000 grant from the Laura Bush Foundation for America’s Libraries that Levin won for her school.

The grant to Kinston High was one of only 205 awarded nationwide by the Laura Bush Foundation, whose grant awards aim to update the years-old collections in school libraries. That’s an aim that hit squarely in the KHS media center’s 900s section – history, geography, travel, biography and genealogy.

Of the 1,079 books in that section, Levin reported, 995 were copyrighted in 2015 or early. The average age of the copyright for that section was 1975.

“We were in desperate need of writing that grant,” Levin said. “The information that was presented back in the ’70s and how it was presented in the ’70s, we know that not all voices in that period of history were well represented. That was a concern I raised when I was writing the grant. We want to make sure we are getting an accurate, more representative retelling of history.”

Already, Levin is talking with teachers in the history department about the best books to buy and she plans to make students in those classes part of the selection process. “In early fall I’m giving the history students a survey to see what they want, especially for biographies, and if there are other topics that are of interest to them,” she said.

Last school year, with school funds, Levin began updating the non-fiction collection – average age 1988, she said – and expects to continue that project this school year.

“With our collection, we’re making sure it supports our current curriculum,” Levin said. “If the majority of your collection is not getting checked out because people aren’t getting checked into it, then your collection doesn’t represent your population, it’s not speaking to your patrons, it’s not serving them. You constantly have to overturn your collection to keep it relevant for your students.”

New books constitute a large part but hardly the only part of what verges on the reinvention of Kinston High’s media center, much of it funded by a $15,000 donation from Spirit AeroSystems.

The Spirit funds are largely going toward furniture, including tables designed for individual or small group work around a desktop computer and dry erase tables that flip up and can be used as tables or dry erase boards or both. Also on Levin’s wish list are movable projection panels, a zoned sound system and interactive white boards.

The planned installation of a rotating display of student and staff art work speaks to Levin’s desire to make the library less a place that students visit occasionally and more a center of student life.

“We want to support the collaboration, we want to help our students feel more comfortable in this library, and make it more relevant to them,” Levin said. “This is not just Ms. Levin’s library, this is not just Kinston High’s library, this is their library.”