For a long time, academic librarians fancied themselves the gatekeepers of knowledge and culture, and for a time, they were probably kind of right. But then, along came the Internet, and with it, an avalanche of information unlike anything anyone had expected. All of a sudden, you didn’t need to know how to navigate confusing call number systems or dig through not-entirely-intuitive catalogs to find the information you wanted. Lots of people argued that the Internet signaled the death of the library, and they seem to have been fighting rearguard actions against that eventuality for years now. Public libraries have become internet hubs for people who can’t afford computers and access of their own, and popular entertainment repositories for folks smart enough to spend their money on books, movies and music that have a shelf life of longer than three months. The “study space” aspect of the academic library gets pushed now more than ever before.
What librarians need to do, if you were to ask me, is brand themselves as the folks who can get you good information, the needle-in-a-haystack kind. There’s so much bad information out there – opinions masquerading as facts, journalism that equates letting two sides of a story slander each other with objective reporting – that skilled information gathering will be an ever more valuable resource with every passing semester. Of course, all the branding in the world won’t help you if no one’s aware of the services you provide…