I finally had some time to catch up on my podcast listening (still have 2 and half to listen to) and was pointed by Marv to this article in the Lawrence Journal-World. The article entitled Libraries are limited, obsolete is written by a self-proclaimed educator – who obviously missed an important bit of education himself. Mark Hirschey a professor at the University of Kansas – School of Business says:

Libraries are inefficient. Like me, kids seek fast, convenient access to up-to-date information. That's available on the Internet. In this new information age, libraries are an obsolete place to store and disseminate information. Rather than speed access to reliable, up-to-date information, libraries provide only remote, slow and inconvenient access to limited and often outdated information.

He goes on to say:

Multiple information providers on the Internet make fact checking easy and reliable. No single person, such as a librarian, can or should be relied upon to verify accuracy.

I would like to point Mr. Hirschey to the Johns Hopkins tragedy (something I’ve written about before – and am discussing in one of my classes right now). Then I’d ask him if he’d like to participate – no – if he’d like his kids to participate in a medical study in a world where doctors only have the resources on the Internet to check their facts & research??

I am so flustered that I have hit delete and backspace about 50 times already – I don’t know what to say to this man – or people like him – except that we as librarians need to get out there and educate the public!! I have a journal entry that I wrote for one of classes this week that I will share with you all once the week is over (I want to wait for everyone to have submitted their assignments without being influenced by what I had to say) in which I state this very thing!!!