A Look Back | Changing Times & Changing Roles

from Hood Magazine | Fall 2019

by Hood College

Point of View

Changing Times & Changing Roles

Academic Librarians Then and Now

By Mary Atwell Archivist, Collection Development Services Manager

The 20th-Century Librarian

When you picture a librarian, what do you see? Probably she (and it usually is a “she”) is wearing comfortable shoes and a pleated skirt, blouse and cardigan sweater ensemble. She wears glasses and a stern look. While librarians of the past 30 years have fought hard against this image, it was unnervingly accurate throughout the 20th century.

The 20th-century academic librarians were collectors of books. Behind the scenes, librarians perused publishers’ catalogs and sent book reviews to faculty for input. They purchased new books and created catalog cards for the books using subject, title and author. Index cards were filed in the card catalog, and books were stamped, labeled and shelved. Out at the desks, librarians answered questions and helped students find books, maps, magazines and reference materials. Staff checked books in and out and kept reading areas quiet and clean.

Consider for a moment when knowledge was not accessible with a swipe or quick search on an electronic device. Academic libraries had to be sure that their collections included the breadth of knowledge needed for all of the students and faculty in their institutions. This was not an easy task and required, above all, space —space to house enough of the world’s knowledge of the humanities and sciences, stored in books, maps, journals, newspapers and more, to satisfy the College’s needs.

Before the internet, the questions we “Google” today, beyond checking the household dictionary or encyclopedia set, belonged to reference librarians. Huge collections of reference books were near their desks to answer both academic and random questions. Questions that search engines answer in seconds took time for librarians; they looked up facts, statistics, definitions and explanations in encyclopedias, atlases and maps, and dictionaries. Students could not check out reference books because librarians and other students needed access to them daily. Keyword and natural language search methods did not exist, but Library of Congress subject headings did (and still do). A librarian was required to navigate them successfully.

The 21st-Century Librarian

The internet forever changed our relationship with information and wreaked havoc on traditional publishing models. As early as the late 1970s, professionals predicted that both libraries and the printed book would die out by the turn of the century. While neither prediction actually occured, the methods of delivering information to students have undergone an enormous shift away from print materials and traditional purchasing models.

The 20th-century librarian spent most available funds on books, while the 21st-century academic librarian weighs the costs of expensive and expansive databases to meet the needs on campus. Academic databases aggregate journals, magazines, reports, e-books, white papers and data for student use. Libraries subscribe to databases annually, almost always with a yearly price increase. Open access publishing helps ease the cost burden, but the open access landscape is complicated and unsettled.

Electronic databases extend the academic library’s available knowledge exponentially past their print collections. Students today are tech savvy, and they are confident in their abilities to find answers on the internet. But information literacy goes well beyond keyword searching or Googling. It encompasses the skills required to find, retrieve, critically analyze and use information. It is the job of the academic librarian to teach these skills through instruction sessions, research assistance and outreach. The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) created the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education in 2015 to guide academic librarians in shaping instruction for students. Last year, using this framework, our librarians held 72 instruction sessions, at least one for each of the First-Year Seminar classes as well as many higher-level undergraduate and even doctoral classes. The library also held general orientation sessions and citation workshops.

**Apple Library, 1950**
William M. Rittase

Behind the scenes, librarians make sure e-books and electronic journals are “findable” in the online library catalog. They upload thousands of book records into the catalog each quarter to update an e-book subscription package, and gather annual usage statistics for journals and databases to determine how to best allocate resources.

Finally, today’s academic librarians reach out to students through social media, work with other campus departments on recruitment and retention and create activities to get students in the library. We have therapy dogs visit each semester, serve coffee and tea the week before finals, and hold stress-busting activities such as slime-making, ugly sweater decorating and library minigolf. Academic librarians are no longer the “shhh-ing” librarians of yesterday!

Apple Library, 1956-1957

Staff: 3 full-time librarians, 1 full-time clerk and 1 half-time clerk, 29 student workers

Expenditures: books, $7,838

Interlibrary Loan: requested 53 books, received 24

Beneficial-Hodson Library and Technology Center, 2017-2018

Staff: 5 full-time librarians, 1 half-time librarian, 2 half-time para-professionals, 6 student workers

Expenditures: books, $25,229; electronic resources, $177,507

Interlibrary Loan: 902 provided to other libraries; 2,501 received from other libraries

Most Popular: white boards and “smart” study rooms

Top Concerns: adequate funding for database subscriptions, preparing for the library renovation, information literacy instruction, “fake news.”

Did you know? Students can now reserve study rooms online; all first-year students attend at least one information literacy instruction class taught by a reference librarian.