For librarians, a new world and a new role

By Charlotte Hsu

Sunday, Oct. 7, 2007 | 7:23 a.m.

The college librarians' job has changed immensely.

In one generation the librarians' world of shelves piled high with printed books, encyclopedias, magazines and scientific journals has given way to Wikipedia , pdfs, e-books and digital periodicals.

They have become masters of the online catalog and Internet and added them to their traditional information tools. Instead of simply helping people find things, these information mavens have increasingly taken on the burden of teaching faculty members, students and others how to evaluate the information glutting the Web.

Though popular wisdom says students are tech-savvy, librarians find that young people rooted to Facebook and iPods often don't know how to gauge sources' reliability. They're also prone to becoming Google-drones, ignoring resources available only in print or through paid subscriptions.

Scholars who don't check multiple sources "could miss a key point, something that could change the way you looked at the topic you're researching," said Jeanne Brown, head of UNLV's architecture library.

Last year librarians taught more than 600 classes, showing members of the UNLV community how to conduct research - how to ferret out trustworthy authors and recognize bogus information, said Patricia Iannuzzi, dean of libraries.

Figures tracked by UNLV's libraries provide clues to how much a librarian's life has changed even in the past few years.

In 2002-03 the libraries, excluding the law library, held 3,500 subscriptions to print journals and 9,000 to electronic ones. By 2005-06, the print subscriptions were down to 2,960 while electronic subscriptions had zoomed to 23,945.

About three quarters of the collections budget goes toward electronic resources, whose usage has about doubled since 2003-04. UNLV's diverse digital offerings include images of American newspapers published from 1690 to 1922 and electronic Bibles, Qurans and Torahs.

When Brown was a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1973, the library was a physical place.

If a researcher wanted information on a topic, Brown would search through drawers carrying thousands of index cards, identifying applicable books.

If a text she wanted was housed in a different library, she would write down the volume's call number, title and location.

"Then I would walk across campus ... and I would find that it was checked out," she said.

Getting materials into the hands of researchers was a labor- and time-intensive task, Brown said.

Online catalogs, which began their rise to prominence 25 or 30 years ago, were the first revolution. Keyword searches allowed patrons to find materials they might have missed using the old card system, which listed each book under a limited number of categories.

The growth of the Internet in the 1990s further increased access to information.

With new technology came new risks.

"Librarians' roles have shifted to being more educators," said Loriene Roy, president of the American Library Association and professor in the University of Texas at Austin's School of Information.

"In the old days it was finding a path to something. ... Now it's how to deal with the huge amount of information that's available," she said.

At UNLV, librarians and professors collaborate to incorporate research skills into coursework. As students search for writings on economics or chemistry, they examine information, such as an author's expertise, that can help them determine the strength of sources.

"Twenty years ago publishers were the filters," Iannuzzi said. "Your article, your work, was looked at by other people who judged the quality."

Back then, experts wrote encyclopedia articles. Now, every person can be his own publisher, and often no one's checking the facts.

Today's librarian is computer-wise. But the modern librarian is really a person of two worlds. Besides digital material, UNLV's libraries house more than 1 million physical volumes. And part of the librarian's job is to remind Web-addicted students that some materials are available only in print.

Gregory Brown, an associate professor of history who studies the French Revolution, says much of what's available digitally is material that experts have already deemed valuable. But researchers often are searching for fresh information.

Centuries-old papers he studies, such as correspondence between everyday people in the 1700s, reveal a lot about the past. And often these resources exist only in physical form, says Brown, who frequently visits the French National Archives .

Though researchers can access online resources from the home or office, a visit to the library can still reap unique rewards. Scholars might find some unexpected treasure while browsing the aisles.

"That serendipity, that book calling out to you from the shelf, definitely is an asset," Jeanne Brown said.

The online catalog, the Internet, it all seems so natural to young people .

When architecture students do projects, they can peruse the Avery Index, a guide to architecture- and design-related literature, online. In 1973 students had to search the print index by year instead of by keyword.

"It's such a different world," Jeanne Brown said. "Thank God we don't have to do that anymore."