Comments on: Will librarians go the way of Kirkus and E&P—and this bird—if students don’t use them often enough?

By: Marilynn Byerly

Marilynn Byerly — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 21:55:24 +0000

Librarians need to advertise themselves better to students because, obviously, students don’t get how important the librarian is to them.

The average students believes in minimal output for the dead minimal requirement for a paper so they just follow the teacher’s simple paper trail with a few books and a bit of online extras.

If the librarians can convince the students that they can make that paper even easier, the students will be beating down the library’s doors to get to them.

By: Don Smith

Don Smith — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 02:52:01 +0000

In the near future libraries need to become the social and intellectual service centers of the community. Already they are the storehouses of the heritage of the community’s culture. And many are already serving as meeting places and external learning centers for a variety of organizations as well as non profit groups. Many host a variety of meetings, concerts and lectures.

The same role can be played in the schools where the librarian serves as a partner for teachers in constructing a variety of learning activities in each course which help the student to understand the complexities of research activities. Research is not a Google search with the results simply displayed in a sequence of paragraphs, but a carefully analyzed document which often brings new incites to a review of a topic studied.

Librarians who forget that their major role is that of a teacher – be they public, school, college or research will inevitably find their roles diminished in their organizations and communities.

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 07:56:10 +0000

Hear, hear, Don! Good public and school libraries mean a better informed electorate. What’s more, past studies have shown that the presence of school librarians is associated with higher test scores. And yet some school boards are still dumping librarians or reducing their ranks. Of course, in the other direction, librarians need to do better marketing and adapt better to competition from Google and the like.

For now, librarians still have the boomers, accustomed to the old ways. What happens when the digital natives take over?

Thanks,
David

By: Don Smith

Don Smith — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 05:09:13 +0000

I am a retired school librarian. I served public education for thirty of my thirty seven teaching years as a school librarian. I was a teacher first and then became a school librarian. That was the relationship I kept reminding myself all of my career. Your role is to teach, your role is to be the gatekeeper, and your role is to be the visionary who will proffer information for your clients. Your role is to set the table with a delectable smorgasbord of materials which your patrons may feast upon. Your role is to sell the gifts of the past to the students of the future. And if you are not proactive and sell your program, then it and you will die.

We cannot afford to lose our librarians and our libraries – our centers of free information for public consumption. My family’s forefathers spent too much of their time and wealth establishing places where everyone could come to acquire information to meet their needs and their desires. We must remember that our libraries are the bastion of our greatest freedom – to seek and obtain information without duress and control from any outside agency, organization or pressure group.