“Why do we need a school
librarian or a school library when we have the Internet?
If we
have dictionaries, why do we need English teachers?
Why do
people buy maps? They have all the roads they need.
Why do people use cookbooks? They have
all the ingredients for a good meal.
Why do people read the TV guide? They
can change channels all they want.
If we
have email, why do we still need telephones?
If we
have a fax machine, why do we still use the post office?
If everyone has a calculator on their PC, why do we need an
Accounting Department?
Anyone
can cut down a tree – but few have the experience to manage a forest.
Why would we spend 10 minutes looking
something up in a book when we can spend two hours looking for it on the
web?
Longer answers
We still need libraries because
“everything” is not on the Internet. Not even Bill Gates can afford to
digitize the sum total of human knowledge. And we need librarians because,
as chaotic as the Internet is, librarians are trained to find information,
and to determine which source - print or electronic – is the most
appropriate to retrieve what is wanted.
The Internet in very few ways
resembles a library. A library provides a clear, standardized set of easily
retrievable resources. The
Internet is like a library with all the books on the floor. There are no
standards, no librarians. The key isn’t a library; it is the librarian.
Everything is not on the Internet;
authors are still publishing in books and non-e journals.
The
Internet is so disorganized that it is time consuming to find good
information.
Information on the Internet is not
peer-reviewed – quality and credibility are variable.
The Internet just provides access to
hundreds of thousands of places to find data. It does not determine which of
these places provides the best, most authoritative, most correct
information, nor does it filter wheat from chaff.
That’s what the librarians do.
The Internet is like a mountain of
knowledge. Anyone can start climbing it. It’s so much easier if you have a
guide. Librarians are the mountain guides. They know some of the best routes
to the top.
Library collections are not actually
on the Internet. What you will find is an equivalent to a card catalog.
The Internet is just one of many tools
in our information-resource toolbox. Librarians know which tools to respond
to a specific request.
Information
on the Internet is free, but you get what you pay for. Thousands of
citations, abstracts and full-text journal articles are not accessible to
the standard search engines.
Taken
from the Department of Education: Tasmania, Australia http://www.education.tas.gov.au/0278/issue/021/whytl.htm
