This may be of related interest ---
From August 2011 Inside Higher Education
This is noted on the website as the MOST VIEWED article all year on the side bar
with 113,563 views
"What Students Don't Know " by Steve Kolowich
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/08/22/erial_study_of_student_research_habits_at_illinois_university_libraries_reveals_alarmingly_poor_information_literacy_and_skills
Please excuse any duplication, this might have already been bantered
about a few months ago Alot of things have been cut in California
not just librarians and libraries ...
/ cheers, Karen Weaver, MLS, Electronic Resources Statistician,
Collection Management Duquesne University Pittsburgh PA email:
weaverk_at_duq.edu / gmail: melvil4u_at_gmail.com
On 11/6/11, James Weinheimer <weinheimer.jim.l_at_gmail.com> wrote:
> This was an article in the Los Angeles Times written by a disillusioned
> librarian who maintains that librarians get little respect, especially
> today ("California must value librarians; libraries can't run
> themselves"
> http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-powers-librarians-20111026,0,3265383.story).
> She provides numbers showing how budgets and librarians have decreased
> in the last few years. The most perceptive point she makes is:
>
> "Still, the idea of shutting down a library is unpalatable to most
> officials. So they lay off librarians to keep the buildings open,
> supporting the illusion that libraries can simply run themselves.
>
> On school visits, I ask what students think a librarian does. The
> response is always the same. "Librarians check out books. They read a
> lot. They tell people to be quiet." These misconceptions are held by
> adults too. When I told a friend that I was embarking on my graduate
> degree, he asked, "You need a master's degree in the Dewey Decimal System?"
>
> With that attitude, who cares whether California has any librarians
> left? Why not replace us with phone trees, self-service checkout
> machines and volunteers?"
>
> Then another article in reply was published by a fellow at a legal
> clinic ("Saving libraries but not librarians"
> http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2011/11/saving-libraries-but-not-librarians-blowback.html),
> who claims that academic libraries perhaps need traditional libraries
> and librarians, but that the general public can get by with Google. His
> opening sums up his argument:
> "The digital revolution, while improving society, has gutted many
> professions. Machines have replaced assembly-line workers, ATMs have
> replaced bank tellers, Amazon has replaced bookstores and IBM's Watson
> may even replace doctors and lawyers. And now, the Internet is replacing
> librarians.
>
> Or at least it should be.
>
> The digital revolution has made many librarians obsolete. Historically,
> librarians exclusively provided many services: They organized
> information, guided others' research and advised community members. But
> now, librarians compete with the Internet and Google. Unlike libraries,
> the Internet's information is not bound by walls; from blogs and books
> to journals and laws, the Internet has them all. And Google makes this
> information easily accessible to anyone with an Internet connection."
>
> My own take on this issue is what others pointed out in the comments to
> the second article: the second person does not know what a librarian
> does, and the librarian in the first article pointed out that very few
> people do know. Even people who use libraries all the time and claim to
> love them so much, still do not understand what library work is. But the
> simple fact is that the materials on the web has caused a true
> revolution in information that librarians are still trying to deal with.
> Libraries normally enact changes on a schedule akin to geological time,
> but the web materials change constantly. Google changes its search
> algorithm about once a day!
>
> The traditional method that libraries have used to deal with new
> materials has been to fold them in with the same procedures they had
> used for the old materials, so e.g. when photography came in, libraries
> altered their current methods to include them; the same with computer
> files and other newer materials. But our old methods have failed when
> applying them to materials on the web (primarily not because online
> materials are harder to catalog--there are just a lot more of them and
> they change unpredictably without notice, so the record becomes outdated
> as a consequence).
>
> If the Google-Publisher agreement had been approved, I think we would be
> taking the issue of the relevance of the library more seriously, but it
> was rejected and libraries have gained a breathing space of a few years.
> Still, all of those materials will definitely be available online sooner
> or later, and libraries will simply have to deal with the situation of
> 90% of the resources people want are available online at the click of a
> button. Someone wrote to me privately about the Amazon Prime program
> http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_primeland_kindlelendinglibrary?nodeId=200757120
> where people can borrow one book a month for $80 a year--plus you can
> watch movies and get other advantages. Depending on the books and movies
> you can get, this may be a very popular choice for a lot of people. For
> those who would choose Amazon Prime, I would bet that many would feel
> they did not need libraries any longer. And in tough economic times,
> they may be less agreeable to taxes paying for libraries that they don't
> use.
>
> These issues could perhaps be resolved if the public had a better
> understanding and appreciation of what librarians do, and what new
> things they could do with updated tools and in a new information
> environment. But librarians themselves will have to change first.
>
> --
> James Weinheimer weinheimer.jim.l_at_gmail.com
> First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
> Cooperative Cataloging Rules:
> http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/
>
Received on Sun Nov 06 2011 - 15:15:28 EST