Yikes! We’re a speed bump on the information highway
Steven Cohen on his blog Library Stuff points to a posting made by Owen Strachan’s blog posting “Where do Libraries Go to Die?” which has the following quotation:
I feel for librarians. This is a tough age. Trained to share a passion for one of the sweetest specimens of common grace, books, today many librarians find themselves as little more than Internet monitors, reduced to pulling up pages of vacuous celebrities to kindle even the slightest spark of interest in their students. This spark, of course, cannot possibly last for more time than it takes a synapse to fire. The librarian–what does that term even mean in this digital age?–is thus a mere custodian of the hyper-short attention spans of her students. Ironically, she was trained to be the very opposite, to be one of the few voices in youth culture that urges “reading” and “thinking”–technical terms, I know–on youth.
Yeow! That hasn’t been my experience at all. At the high school level as a librarian, I have never experienced a more dynamic and exciting time than when we allowed technology into the library media center. At no time did I ever feel that I was a mere custodian. School librarians have the opportunity to engage students more than ever and at more levels than ever. Not only has our educational role increased – particularly in the area of literacy – but we have the opportunity to enable students to produce information requiring a broader range of intellectual and creative intelligences than in the past — and all with the potential of an international audience.
Still, the whole reading thing is a concern. Every new study that comes out seems to mark a new low in reading scores and interest in reading in the “traditional” forms. As much as I love reading blogs and surfing the Web there isn’t any way that I can convince myself that I’m reading at the same level that I would be if I were reading David McCullough or William Faulkner.
Nevertheless, I’m not convinced that Google is making us dumber. I think we are still figuring out how to get through the novelty factor of whizzing through the enormous trough of information that is the Web. I do think that while the digital world has made our opportunities greater to interact with students and teachers, I think it is also giving the library profession the opportunity for renewed vigor in enouraging our teenagers to read beyond the latest shenanigans of our musical celebrities.
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