Sometimes libraries get threatened in little ways, usually by those who don't see the importance of what we do. It's the library closures that get all the attention, not the little things that happen all the time.
A couple of years ago I was working in a public library. The man who supervised the library was in charge of Parks & Recreation for the entire county. He knew nothing of libraries or why we did things the way we did. At the time I was the Collection Development Librarian. I worked with all the other librarians to decide what books to buy and then I was in charge of ordering, receiving & processing all those books. I loved my job.
When our Director retired after 25 years, her supervisor (the P&R guy) came in and said we needed to restructure everything because we had 3 vacancies (2 in reference and the Director). I get that, we weren't a huge library system with lots of librarians, and I was absolutely willing to do my part. He looked at me and said "you need to do Young Adult services and Collection Development". I had no experience with YA. None. I took 1 YA Lit class in library school and it had been 8 years before. He looked at me and said "But you're a librarian, you should know how to be any type of librarian. Just figure it out."
Fast forward two years. I am now in a small technical college library. Yesterday I got called to my VP's office where I was informed that our Computer Technology teachers need the library computer labs. Their labs can't be modified the way they want them to be modified so they want the ones we have and we would not have access to them at all. I seriously wanted to cry. We have 15 computers on the floor of the library and we do have wireless but most of our students do not own a laptop or tablet. In exchange for our two lovely labs, they want to give me 2 smaller labs on a different floor in the same building. Our administrative side is itching to take these labs. They've been calling my VP every day to see if they can take them over and start working on them. They said that the old labs upstairs can't altered the way they want them to be altered because of the wiring in the walls.
So now I'm being asked to defend the value of our services and why it's important to have library services in the library. It would be easier to defend why we exist at all.
Why are libraries so easy to attack? Librarians are typically seen as a passive group so those who like to intimidate find us to be easy targets. Why on earth would libraries would need all those books and computers? People have that stuff at home! Just because you have an oven doesn't mean you know how to cook. Why assume that because a person has a computer that they know how to use it? Why assume the people have it at home at all? People need us more than ever. People are not information literate. In fact, I know that I could teach every person on this campus something they don't already know about searching for information. Does that mean they'll come and find out what I have to share? Hmm...
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