Week 6--Thing 15--2.0 and the Future of Libraries

Hurrah for Thing 15, which asks us to consider and blog about what we've probably been mulling for the past 14 Things. Libraries have to stay relevant or shut down. OCLC's Rick Anderson has it right in "Away from Icebergs" when he says that "it no longer makes sense to collect information products as if they were hard to get." I'm right there with him when he says we have to "find new ways to bring our services to patrons rather than insisting that they come to us—whether physically or virtually." Michael Stephens explores this in "Into a New World of Librarianship", where he describes the contemporary librarian as someone who designs programs and services in response to user needs. Of course libraries and librarians have been doing this for a long, long time. One of the arguments, described in the Wikipedia article, makes the case that many of the pillars of Library 2.0 procedures are nothing new. What is new is the way people both use and access the Internet--and by extension information. Libraries are in competition with computers, cell phones and whatever comes next.

Here's where the role of the school librarian is pivotal. Rick Anderson says that libraries are poorly equipped for teaching the new technologies, so it's up to libraries to eliminate the barriers between people and information. With all due respect, I doubt he's spent time in an educational setting watching students evaluate information--or not. Information alone will not provide our civilization with the tools it needs to meet the future. We need the skills to weigh and evaluate, and these skills must be taught--often in a school library.

In the words of that old Girl Scout song, "Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver and the other gold."