Thursday 26 July 2012

First rung - ETL401 - forum post

Are school librarians an endangered species?”  - Maybe all librarians are on the endangered list.

Definitely the cardigan wearing, glasses on the end of the nose, running around telling people shhhh, hair in a bun type that sit amongst their collection waiting for clients to come to them are undeniably on the short list to extinction (this excludes Batgirl who we must remember was a librarian).
The future of the librarian, TL’s and others depend on their ability to adjust to the information environments that are emerging and the speed in which they can adapt their activities to accommodate these environments,. This highlights the importance of diversifying the skills of library staff to include a wide variety of technologies and strategies for providing the services of teacher, reference librarian and web specialist that students and faculty now require (Hunter & Ward, 2011), not just be linked solely and evermore to physical texts.
According to Moorefield-Lang, TLs must put up their hand and prove that they are essential for information learning. TL’s must maintain their relevance in an online digital age by embracing new technology, redefine their role, acquire and exploit in their role as information literacy leaders, a working knowledge of the social media platforms their ‘digital native’ clients use.


Hunter, G. & Ward, D. (2011). Students research the library: Using student-led
ethnographic research to examine the changing role of campus libraries. College & Research Libraries News. 72(5), 264-268. Retreved from

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