Return From Syracuse

Well, greetings reader! I have returned from my quest for library knowledge at Syracuse University. This was just my introduction to my degree program, but it was at times, enlightening and fascinating, and at other times very intense and fast-paced. There are many things I want to share with you that I learned during my time in Syracuse, which I will do over the next couple of weeks. I would like to start off with some facts about libraries I picked up last weekend, as told by Dave Lankes.

In the United States, there are approximately 16,000 public libraries. These 16,000 public libraries give some type of internet access to 98% of Americans. In particular, public libraries in rural areas in the United States provide the only internet access available to those individuals in rural areas. However, internet services are not the only amazing statistic about libraries. Last year in the United States, over one billion visits were recorded in libraries. If this number was averaged with the population of the US, each person living in the US would have visited on average 4.5 times. Reference librarians in pubic libraries answered about 301 million reference questions from patrons. Circulation of all items (movies, books, CD’s, etc) in public libraries is up 61% over the last decade. In 2008, over one billion items were circulated (checked out, and returned) through libraries.

To me, these are encouraging and interesting statistics. Many people question the usefulness of librarians, and libraries in the current information age in which we live. We have Google, Wikipedia, and millions of other websites to get our information from. This explosion of information in cyberspace leads many people, including some librarians, to question the usefulness of libraries and librarians. However, the statistics tell another story - we see usage and circulation statistics skyrocketing. Clearly, the demand for libraries in general is greater than it has been in the past 50 years.

So if the information in libraries is important, and used frequently, what’s the point of librarians? After all, the library catalogs are online and searchable by patrons from the comfort of their own homes. Well, librarians are incredibly adept and skilled at connecting people with the information they need. For the past several millennia, this information has been contained in books. People automatically associate the skills of librarians with books, and to be fair this is a reasonable assumption. But it’s not true - librarians are familiar (or should be familiar) with information in all forms, be it in a book, an electronic database, or the internet. Librarians will only become more important, I think, as information grows and grows, and individuals are bewildered by the sheer amount of information. Librarians, and the skills they possess, will be key in sifting through all the information and providing people with what they need to survive and improve themselves, and hopefully our society, in this information age.

How much information is there out there, and how is it growing? Allow me to share this video with you on that very topic, from the iSchool at Syracuse:












































- Jason Dean