A reader writes:
Saying that modern librarians “teach students how to search the Internet” is about as offensive (at least to librarians) and dismissive as calling teachers glorified babysitters. Information retrieval is a major element in a reference librarian's job, yes, but it goes so far beyond Internet searches. Students already know very well how to search online – that’s part of the problem. Students love turning in research papers that cite Wikipedia as their primary source. Any college course that’s worth anything will want students to do scholarly research, and that’s where they fall short, because they don’t understand the difference between an online database of peer-reviewed journals and Google.
That’s what information retrieval librarians do: try to show students and other researchers how to tell good information from bad and how to pursue a line of research until you find the information you need. Teachers can’t show students how to do that because most teachers don’t know how. There’s a reason that it takes two or three years to get a Master’s Degree in Library Science.
And those are just the reference or information retrieval librarians – there are dozens more behind the scenes of any library, building and weeding the collection, cataloging items, acquiring new material. You'll probably never see these librarians, but without them, there wouldn’t be a library for you to use. For everybody who says that the book aspect of a library is obsolete because they can access any information they want to online and read any book they have a mind to on their Kindle, good for you – but the vast majority of people can’t. For readers who can’t afford to buy new books or people who don’t have Internet access at home, the library and its hard-copy collection is indispensible.
Another writes:
Teachers play a huge role in the lives of students and their place isn’t questioned. However, the responsibilities of librarians have never been fully realized. Without librarians educators are going to be at a huge loss. Teachers are already overworked and under paid. They have to build study plans, grade, keep their students (and often parents) informed of their progress and they have to do this often with growing class sizes. School librarians also carry a special burden of having several classrooms coming in and out of their library where they too need to come up with a course plan,
deal out grades and track student progress. All this goes along with maintaining the catalog, collection development and organization, helping students after school find information for their homework, and keeping a safe place (often times physically and emotionally) in the school.The roles of educators and librarians are complementary and often wade into the other’s world, but one cannot replace the other, and one cannot shoulder the weight of both and do well at either.
Another:
Your selected quotations actually frame the wrong argument, as reading the other two debate articles (and a large number of the comments) would demonstrate. Wurman is just flat wrong in his understanding of the issue. Certified school librarians ARE teachers, credentialed and everything. In fact, many of us were classroom teachers before we went back to school for additional training to transition into the library. I switched from teaching English (including AP and IB) to the library precisely because I realized a) technology could profoundly change pedagogy, but nobody was training teachers and I wanted to be a part of that, and b) I wanted a broader sphere of influence among the students than the (mere) 150 or so I saw in my classes every day.
As a librarian, I teach every student in the school at one point or another. Thus, the argument is not whether teachers are more valuable than librarians. The argument is whether society values what librarians offer. Again, contrary to Wurzel, we are not just about handing out books to ensure students are reading. That's only a small part of what I do, actually. In my school, I am the main go-to person for faculty and students in technology integration, whether it's film editing, the latest Web 2.0 app, or using Google Docs for collaboration. I teach regular classes on research and information literacy.
Unfortunately, information literacy skills are not part of many schools core (read: tested) curriculum, making us easy to shove out the door in a budget crunch.
The Dish 