Facing Reality

As a follow-up to my last post, I would like to touch on the benefits of accepting the realities of the world today when considering the effects of e-readers on the profession. It may be the case that the proliferation of these devices has affected the job prospects of today's librarians negatively, but it is certain that there are many other factors at play. There is another side to this coin, though. With the job market being the way it is, there are many working librarians who are forced to take on more and more responsibilities for the same pay, and who are expected to take care of it all in the same amount of time.

As an example, Michael (whom I mentioned in my previous post) told me about how his elementary school's librarian is only there for half of the day. The other half of the day is spent at another school, and parents who volunteer fill in as best they can while the librarian is out. Sure, it would be great if the school district could afford to staff the two libraries separately, and perhaps interested parties should do all that they can to help that become a reality, but we can't confuse the reality we wish for with the reality we have. By doing so, we would be saying to librarians like the one at Michael's school that we are abandoning them to their fate. The reality of the situation is such that e-readers could be an incredible benefit to employed librarians who are finding themselves shouldering much more responsibilities than they ever anticipated. Think about how much easier it would be to manage two libraries if the collections consisted mostly of e-books. It could be done from a single computer and, presumably, would be equivalent to managing a single collection. Students would not need to physically check books out and it would not be necessary to ask for parent volunteers to staff the library, which is better for everyone as parents have less and less time these days outside of work.

As with many aspects of the relationship between librarians and technology, we must keep in mind that change happens; it is not something we can avoid or that we can prevent. It is our job to look at the changes which are taking place and take advantage of them in order to benefit our patrons and our profession. Yes, it is a shame that librarians are having a difficult time finding employment. We are not the only ones, however, and we cannot use technology as a scapegoat. What we can do is recognize the prevalence of e-readers and use them to provide the best service we can for our patrons and, as I think many of our blog posts show, there are plenty of ways for librarians to use e-readers effectively.