by Patrick Appel
A reader writes:
As a public librarian in a large metropolitan city, I can attest that our patronage is up...substantially now more than ever due to people seeking out resume advice, and our usage of computers has skyrocketed. Which goes to show you one thing: people need libraries.
Regardless whether they own their computer, many patrons still need assistance in navigating the 'Net, or advice on how to compose a resume, or where and how to use the templates available on word processing programs. Or they come for information on community resources to assist in their job search, or simply to discover free events in their community for their families.
They come for book discussions and debates, for senior "Wii" programs, for children's play-reading times, for how to start your own business seminars, for teenage events that encourage good reading and learning habits, or simply to just enjoy reading the racks of magazines and newspapers knowing all the time they are all...free.
But they also read. A lot. Fiction and non-fiction books are still checked out. There is a warm, fuzzy comfortable-ness about taking home books and reading - especially escapist type of genres.
But what can a library do to stay relevant? It still needs 'place.' A library was always a place first. A haven to escape the hustle and bustle of their jobs, or even their family home. A place where every square inch of information and recreational reading is there at their fingertips. A place where librarians still answer reference questions and are available to help them navigate that almost-overwhelming mass of information that is thrown at them each day on the 'Net, TV and radio and in newsprint.
In short, the library is still the most precious gift we give ourselves as a nation. Librarians are now more than the old-fashioned point-that-dewey-out individual-they are now information miners, resume makers, recreational reading advisors, gamers, events-planners for all ages.
The library is the still the best place in town.
Another reader adds:
My inclination is to say that libraries could very well become central to communities -- but that they'd have to shift emphasis from distributing information to editing it.
"Librarianship" is a skill that is only becoming more important. The question that the librarian seeks to answer is, I think, a defining one: How can I deal intelligently with this mass of information?
I think a great many of your readers go to the Daily Dish to answer that very question. They go as one goes to library: not only does the blog provide content (the analytic function of blogging), but it sorts through it (the curatorial function of blogging). Libraries do both. They provide content and they help people sort through it.
But as the former becomes more accessible, the latter becomes more important.
Some ideas would be this. Libraries should focus on:
Community
- Hyperlocal news aggregation
Discovery
- Personalized reading lists and recommendation like "new books you might like" and "new articles you might like"
Editing
- Helping people create information consumption regiments
- Parsing paragraphs and quotes from books and aggregating them
- Collecting book reviews