Libraries Obsolete?

By Lauren Barack -- School Library Journal, 9/1/2006

If you want to draw fire online, tell your blog readers that libraries are obsolete.

That’s what ed-tech maven David Warlick did on his site, 2 Cents Worth in July. “Libraries, as we think of them, are soon to become obsolete,” he wrote, adding that information itself—rather than its source—is now more important. “That’s what got people really stirred up,” says Warlick. “To librarians, it’s all about the source because they are keepers of the source.”

Joyce Valenza, a librarian at Springfield Township High School Library in Erdenheim, PA, posted a response on Warlick’s site. Rather than a keeper of sources, she says she sees herself as a guide. “Students still need guidance as they learn,” says Valenza. Libraries will not become obsolete—they just need to adapt, she says. “I think libraries are morphing. I circulate fiction, but also laptops and video cameras.”

However, Warlick says that school libraries have suffered from budget cuts. In order to save them, he believes libraries and their so-called keepers need to change. “There is a need for librarians to reinvent what they do,” says Warlick. “The library can’t just focus on consumption of information, they need to also help students learn how to create information.”

Valenza couldn’t agree more—as long as there’s still a library where people can gather. “The materials may look different, and my reference collection will get smaller,” she says. “But students will still come in for storytelling, and there will be a physical place called the library.”