I am observing the reference desk at a public library for my Access to Info course. In doing so, I have had the opportunity to watch how several different librarians deal with questions that are being thrown at them. One lady, I'll just call her "Old School".... believes wholeheartedly that libraries are not moving in a good direction. She thinks that the use of the internet and computers in general is sort of turning the library profession into a laughing stock. "Old School" primarily uses print resources to answer questions and she tried her hardest not to use computers... "unless completely necessary."
I sort of had "Old School" in mind when I was searching the blogs for an interesting topic. Our very own "LibrarianInBlack" had something to say about this exact topic. She is responding to a book about how the internet is killing our culture. I thought she had some cool things to say in response to this book (and that I wish I could have thought of as I was talking to "Old School")...
"I will agree that the web is full of junk. Who wouldn't? But you know what? So are the shelves of any bookstore or library. The bulk of what humanity produces is junk. Just because it's published/printed doesn't make it not-junk. But there are a few lovely jewels out there, things we try to seek for ourselves, and the finding of which librarians make their life's work. The web is hard to sift through sometimes. However, the beauty of the web is that professionals do emerge on top, they do become more easily found, top of the search engines, listed in subject guides, linked to by countless individuals, and so on. People value, recommend, and highlight those works that are the best to them. That is how the diamonds rise toward the top of the heap (and I'm not just talking about search engine results here) and regular folks can find them more easily than they can find the junk. That's not to say there isn't still a bit of sifting going on...there is...but a lot of the junk gets self-filtered out because regular folks find it, disregard it, don't link to it, don't click on it, don't want to look at it. "
Maybe "Old School" should read this...
-Amber
4 comments:
Sounds like the debate Gorman kicked off about the internet being filled with non-experts or citizen journalists. Librarian in Black's response was similar to many of the responses he received. There is quality material online; it's a matter of being able to recognize it while ignoring the irrelevant which is afterall the core of research.
As I have mentioned elsewhere, Library 2.0 is really about change. Change can be very difficult for many if not most people. While there may be "early adopters" of technological change, many others will be "resisters"--for a variety of reasons.
I think the librarian mentioned may be an example of someone who is having difficulty dealing with change.
Fortunately, the field of Organization Development (which I have worked in) is there to assist, both with consultants and wonderful resources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Organizational_development
From my observing experience in an academic library setting I have met and talked with research librarians that have adapted to research databases being online. One of the librarians had a student come to the desk with a question and the librarian asked the student if she wanted a five minute review on the procedure to find info in general for future work or did the student want to have her find the info for her. The student had her mini- lesson on researching info.
i am sort of a little perturbed by this. i have been having the hardest time find a job in the library profession. To see that it's still full of conservatives who'd rather spend money killing trees for their research methosd is a little disappointing. i agree there are a lot of books that have been published that never should have been, but electronic databases aren't the be-all-and-end-all of research either. At this point we still have to try and strike a medium if we can.
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