News Report 4

The New York Times
“In Web Age, Library Job Gets Update”
Motoko Rich
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/16/books/16libr.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
February 15th 2009

This article was once again about libraries and the struggle they face with attempting to mesh with all the new information technology. Also, in this recession we currently face, a lot of librarians are the first workers to be cut when the budget needs restructuring. A lot of parents have expressed outrage over this, as librarians are not just keepers of the library, rather they are teaching students, especially young kids, how to think with an open-mind. Most school librarians are realizing that in this new information age it is better to get with the times than to be left behind. Therefore many of them are implementing new ways to make learning and reading fun. Stephanie Rosalia, a librarian in New York, teaches her young students information literacy skills, for instance. Her take on all of this is that if you can at least get children wanting to learn and read anything, then they will probably eventually come to want to read books.
I found the article relevant to a lot of our class discussions. I also thought it was sad that almost always the first job to get cut in school budgets is the librarian job. These librarians obviously play a pivotal role in today’s information age, because we all know that the information that is so readily available to us is not always reliable. Without anyone to tell young people this, they may go on assuming that everything they read is true, which is not a good premise for life or learning. I think it will be interesting to see how libraries and librarians’ roles evolve in the coming years. Already we have begun to see a shift in their job description, because when I was coming through grade school the librarians did not teach the students the types of things outlined in this article. Also, I do not believe this class I am currently taking would have been available to me years ago.