February 4th, 2021
What is a librarian's role...?
The librarian must play a leading role in helping members of the community find common ground in shared facts. This means we aren't the dispensers of "the facts" but rather the initiators and enablers of the processes that lead to common ground. We partner with others: classroom and subject instructors, skilled facilitators, etc. Our role is essentially educational -- teaching information literacy skills (with a deep understanding of information literacy) to enable community members to evaluate purported facts for themselves; and skills of communication and dialog to interact constructively with others.
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Comments (4)
Comments (4)
HI Dave and Randall:
Good points. How do you start the process of educating library users? How do you reach beyond the people who self-select to learn what you want to teach?
This is where the rubber meets the road. Let's change the term from "library users" to "community members" -- people whether they are using the library in traditional ways or not.
I see the answer as highly context-dependent. In an educational setting, there's a captive audience: students. Try the embedded librarian approach: reaching out to subject instructors of relevant courses to incorporate information literacy. Or consider if you can propose a new course, possibly in collaboration with a subject instructor.
The problem is different for public librarians because there isn't a captive audience. But here again, partnerships might be a way to proceed: offer the instruction through partnerships with community and social groups. That way, the groups are enlisted to motivate their members to attend, or make the instruction part of meetings they hold for other purposes.
Librarians historically have fallen into the trap of thinking they are the cultural guardians of a community and know what's best. Wayne Wiegand writes extensively about librarians trying to decide what is "uplifting" to the community in his book, "Main Street Public Library" going back to Melvil Dewey's time. Many librarians wouldn't collect fiction books because they were considered "low brow." Inevitably, the community informed the library what it needed.
You are correct, the path is to teach the community how to evaluate information so they can decide for themselves. Since information has an emotional connection, telling people the facts won't get you anywhere anymore than the librarians who told people to read non-fiction because it was more cultured.
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