Librarians and Learning

I’ve been thinking a lot about Scott Bennett’s article, Libraries and Learning: A History of Paradigm Change (Portal: Libraries and the Academy, Vol. 9. no.2, 2009), in which Bennett discusses the library’s shift from a reader-centered paradigm to a learning centered-paradigm.  In this Monday’s  New York Times (May 25, 2009, p. A14), an editorial was written in response to the news article “Psst! Need the Answers to No. 7 on the Physics Exam? Click Here” (May 18).   Joseph P.Healey writes, “Students have enormous access to information under the sun..Today, they have gluts of information. What they don’t have is a capacity to understand it all, analyze it, evaluate it and make it operate in their lives.”   Healey goes on to say something that hit right to my librarian core: “The challange for all of us in education is to accept the fact that we do not control access to information, but we do control the central task of turning information into real learning…” If you read Bennett’s article, you’ll see the connection here.  I think librarians have been too long concerned with access, and not concerned enough about what student’s actually DO with the information which we provide.  How can we turn information into real learning?  Librarians are educators– not simply traffickers of information.  There are many ways that we can contribute to student learning.  From improving  faculty collaboration, participating in learning communities,  leading workshops (giving real meaning to the resources which we provide), to making the extra effort at the reference desk– librarians are in the ideal position to contribute to real learning everyday.  -LF