Monday, March 2, 2009

Teaching How to Get the Information

The next article in the "Future of Reading" series, from the New York Times, is out and it is even more applicable than the last: The Digital Librarian.

What role will librarians have in the technological-centered library? That is a question many people, especially people like me, who are just starting out in this field, keep asking ourselves.

The whole article is worth a look, but there are two main points that I am going to take away from it:

1) Librarians have to be the technology pioneers - the first to use, experiment, and learn.
2) Teaching the Internet (including copyright, site evaluation, databases, etc) is one of our most important jobs.

The Librarian is no longer just the gatekeeper of the books (though we have not been just that for a long time), but a tool to guide patrons through the maze of available resources - finding, evaluating, and using book-based and web-based resources.