http://chronicle.com/article/Academic-Library-Autopsy/125767/
Brian T. Sullivan is a librarian at Alfred State University in NY, not far from where I grew up by the way. This article is a fussy, worrying, hand-wringing view of students need for "us," the librarians. It sounds like a person with low-self esteem asking "do you really like me?" The answer is, they usually don't even notice you. Right? But they like you when you give them what they need, just like anyone else. You like a waitress when they bring you the food you ordered, only they may do it in a more charming manner.
I love snarky explorations into thoughtful topics, but his 6 points about libraries no longer being the sweetheart of the university is just searching for compliments. Some of these points are valid concerns, but his sixth point invalidated the entire argument in my opinion. He's saying, I'm paraphrasing, "yes, we do all this well, but the bottom line is money and not enough students use the library to justify the cost." Yes, libraries are expensive, but who would go to a college that didn't have a library? We will always be the "third place," if you will. Not just a big building to sit in between classes, that happens to have books. But if you go on a college tour, even 20 years from now, there is going to be a certain amount of questions about why there isn't a "Resource Center" or "Learning Commons." The terminology for where the information is housed can change, but people still know where the haven is, it's in the big building that is incomprehensible even to many of the the professors who teach here.
If you go into a library, you may or may not care who is lurking in the corner waiting to be at your service, but you know that they are there. Whether it is a cranky senior citizen or a too-cool-for-the-library hipster, someone who works in the library will help you find a book or an article or even something on the internet. Our internet is better than your phone, because we have been searching for things longer. We even know about the fancy parts of Google right? Did you know about Google.com/unclesam? This is the part of Google that will search just .gov or .mil sites and has a lot of amazing information such as free medical information or economic statistics that could help your business.
We will also help you with a lot of technical aspects of whatever device you are using, whether it is an Ipad that you checked out from the circulation desk or your own laptop with the very easy to use ; ) recent release of BlackBoard... The librarian will be that person who helps you out with something or will at least listen to you gripe about what is happening in your research endeavors, even if it something we cannot resolve.
In addition to formal, classroom style instruction on how to use this vast body of resources, newly available right at your fingertips, we will help you analyze the materials and put together a fairly readable paper. I have pointed many students to something that looked great, but then it just didn't fit with what the professor was asking for in the assignment. Finding exactly the right articles has been tough for me many times and I have many many years experience using these materials. I will admit, I cannot see a time in the near or distant future when a new student jumps right in and has no fear in conducting their research.
Sullivan states.
I will admit, I'm really not too worried about databases becoming so intuitive and easy to use that people no longer need us, even in 2050. The way things are now, I feel like perhaps 10% of students, at best, know how to conduct scholarly research. I could only hope those ridiculous database vendors DO get their act together. When they do, the database will need a "read my mind" feature, because it really seems like half the battle is convincing a student that peer-reviewed and published articles are somewhat more useful in your paper than something off the internet, like a dumb blog post. Students still don't always read the articles or have an understanding about the importance of what this research is for them, so maybe in 3050, people who work in libraries need to be worried.
I even do readers advisory still; this is very exciting, sometimes students do something called "leisure reading." This is when the student either has enough time to read something out of the curriculum or they have just had enough of the subject they think about all day long and need a good book to unwind. Books are TV to some people, a way to decompress. At the Mary Livermore Library we have a collection of several thousand digital books available for download through a consortium that provides us with access to these--- many people use this for work and fun. The most recent non-course-related readers advisory was to a new student browsing the collection who used to work the Kindle helpdesk at Amazon. She still knows where to go to get the good stuff! Either way, we can usually help you find what you need in print or electronic format, for work or for pleasure; the resourceful people will still be hanging out with us here in the Library in 2050.
No comments:
Post a Comment