We No Longer Have Librarians

Fortunately most college and university presidents realize the value of librarians. Michael MacDowell, Misericordia University President, apparently is not one of these enlightened people. In response to the question, “How has technology affeced libraries at colleges?” President MacDowell stated, “We no longer have librarians or head librarians.” MacDowell was being interviewed by a reporter from The Times Leader, Wilkes-Barre, PA because he will be receiving a special achievement award from The Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeastern Pennsylvania.

MacDowell further states that while “…students themselves come [to college] with a great deal of ability to use technology in communications…sometimes the students pick up things on the Internet and determine that they’re definitive and they aren’t.”

One of the reasons that academic librarians are recognized as valuable resources is because they are the ones who are teaching Information Literacy skills to the students on their campuses. While all students may know how to use Google and Wikipedia, many of then don’t know how to find a book or how to find an article in a scholarly journal. Or even know what a scholarly journal is. They can’t synthesize the information they do find when they are writing papers, and they don’t know how to give credit to the sources that they use. Where do students gain these skills? Why from librarians of course!