Teacher Librarian Feature Article

The TL web site provides a sample of the excellent material available in each back issue. To access a specific article, bookmark, or column subscribe today, subscribers can contact us with the volume, number and article they would like.
V.29.5 | V.29.4 | V.29.3 | V.29.2 | V.29.1

Bonus Article

Volume 29, Number 4, April 2002

Why Do We Need a Teacher-Librarian or a Library When We Have the Internet?

Cynthia Kahn and Michelle Mallette

Colleagues, parents, students and even principals have been known to question the need for a teacher-librarian, or even the library itself, now that we have the World Wide Web. After all, “everything” is on the Internet, and for free, right? While we know this is not the case, not everyone does. Seeking ways to both justify and explain the library to management, Cynthia Kahn posed the question on an electronic discussion list, asking librarians how they would respond to the question, and received a collection of snappy comebacks, longer answers and some excellent references for further exploration. Michelle Mallette adapted the corporate responses for schools. Here are some of the gems:

Snappy Comebacks

If we have dictionaries, why do we need English teachers?
Why do people buy maps? They have all the roads they need.
Why do people use cookbooks? They have all the ingredients for a good meal.
Why do people read TV Guide? They can change channels all they want.
If we have e-mail, why do we still need telephones?
If we have a fax machine, why do we still use the post office?
Now that there is a PC on everybody’s desk, why do we still need an Information Technology department?
If everyone has a calculator on their PC, why do we need an Accounting department?
Anyone can cut down a tree — but few have the experience to manage a forest!
Why would we want to spend 10 minutes looking something up in a book when we can spend two hours looking for it on the Web?

Longer Answers

We still need libraries because “everything” is not on the Internet. Not even Bill Gates can afford to digitize the sum total of human knowledge. And we need librarians because, as chaotic as the Internet is, librarians are trained to find information, and to determine which source — print or electronic — is the most appropriate to retrieve what is wanted.
The vice-president for content management at IBM estimated, at the 1999 Special Libraries Association Winter Conference, that about 1/100th of one per cent of all information is in electronic format.
The Internet in very few ways resembles a library. A library provides a clear, standardized set of easily retrievable resources.
The Internet is like a library with all the books on the floor. There are no standards, no librarians. The key isn’t libraries; it is the librarian.
Obvious: Everything is not on the Internet; authors are still publishing in books and non-e journals. Not so obvious: the Internet is so disorganized that it is time consuming to find good information. Information on the Internet is not peer-reviewed — quality and credibility are variable.
The Internet just provides access to hundreds of thousands of places to find data. It does not determine which of these places provide the best, most authoritative, most correct information nor does it filter the wheat from the chaff. That’s what the librarians do. And not everything is online.
The Internet is like a mountain of knowledge. Anyone can start climbing it. It’s so much easier if you have a guide. Librarians are the mountain guides. They know some of the best routes to the top. They can save your life in an emergency. They have survival skills you need, like where to find water, and how to fix a rope, or jury-rig a workaround. You might not think you need one until you’re half way up. It’s a bit late at that point. So much better to take a guide with you from the very beginning, don’t you think?
It’s about skills and experience. Usually we can find the information in instants compared to their own attempts. One person spent an hour searching the Internet and then gave me the task. I looked the information up in a book in 30 seconds. By the way — they had their own copy of the book!
The Library of Congress is not actually available on the Internet. Library collections are not actually on the Internet. What you will find is an equivalent to a card catalog. Once you locate the record for the book you need, your library will be glad to arrange to borrow a copy for you.
The Internet is just one of many tools in our information-resource toolbox. Our highly-developed skills lie in knowing which tools to use to respond to a specific request.
Information on the ’Net is free, but you get what you pay for.
Information is not always free: consider databases we subscribe to and copyrighted articles.
Thousands of citations, abstracts and full-text journal articles are not accessible to the standard search engines.

There are two fundamental problems with using the Internet as a source of basic information

Lack of authority: In an environment where publication of information is extremely low-cost, everyone gets to publish. The accuracy, authenticity and authority of this information cannot be readily verified. This is generally not true of conventional publishing, where the publisher can be held accountable for inaccurate information. For example, if I were so inclined, I could readily publish the complete works of William Shakespeare, with every 100th word arbitrarily replaced with an antonym. Such a change, while radically changing the content of altered dialog, might be subtle enough to be undetected. It is exceedingly unlikely that I would be able to find a publisher who would print these altered works, particularly one that would willfully declare that they were the original words of Shakespeare.
Lack of concision: While it may be fairly easy to isolate Internet-based sources of information on well-defined topics (such as, for example, breast cancer research) through the use of existing, third-party search engines, finding a concise citation of the history and legal ramifications of Miranda rights without already knowing of an appropriate site is not likely to be easy. Searches for “Miranda Rights” on two popular engines, Yahoo and AltaVista, turn up over 2000 hits each, from a wide variety of sources.

Further Information

Abram, S. (1999). I’m as mad as Hell and I’m not going to take it anymore... a little fun with the web-challenged.

Buchanan, Leigh. (1999, January). The smartest little company in America. Inc. 42.

Burke, J. D. (1997). Myths about electronic learning resources: Addressing some commonly held misconceptions related to access and use of electronic information.

Coyle, K. Why the Internet doesn’t replace the library.

Crawford, W., & Gorman, M.. (1995). Future libraries: Dreams, madness & reality. Chicago: American Library Association.

Downie, J. S. (1999). Jumping off the disintermediation bandwagon: Reharmonizing LIS Education for the Realities of the 21st Century.

Parker, A. (1996). Demonstrating the value of libraries. Previously availaible online at http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/cfl-cbgf/liaison/1996/96-5/value.htm.

A summary of links for evaluating Web resources.

Weeks, Linton. (2001, January 13). The old-fangled search engine: In a digital age, do libraries still count? Washington Post, C1.