challenging question
Posted by Jami on April 26, 2007
Kelly asks: “What are the three biggest challenges facing college libraries today?”
The first biggest challenge that I see is finding the ability to deliver resources and services to our users in the manner in which they expect (and quite frankly, in our current consumer educational climate, demand). To do this, libraries need to break down the barriers that they have upheld for many years regarding information type and format in order to deliver materials via a unified interface (and yes, i’m talking about the web interface as always). This will demand a great amount of reconciliation and work between the manner in which our vendors provide resources and the way in which our individual libraries present that information.
The second biggest challenge i think comes with increasing our commitment to information literacy. These two points should go hand in hand, i believe. While I do not believe that our interfaces should reflect the difficult information environment, i do think that our classrooms should address it and that libraries and librarians will bear the challenge of this.
Third biggest challenge is staffing (and training for that staff)– as our jobs become more complicated and busy (doesn’t it seem that the more technology allows to be more productive, the more time is disappearing? how is this possible – i’m getting more done, but i still feel as though i don’t have enough time to get everything i need to do done). Ultimately, while my focus is on electronic resources and environments, libraries and librarianship are a people business. This means that it is important to retain our face and our personal relationships with our users and the institutions that we support. In an era of job consolidation and an common misconception that believes that technology resources can replace human ones, we must make sure that our institutions and administrations value our human element more than ever.
By the way, as always, my answers apply to all types of libraries – college, public, special, you name it.
What are your answers?
