The Information Dark Ages...Again

Years ago I asked my grandmother questions about her early life, and she put me off, saying her life wasn't interesting at all. But I kept asking, and she finally told me some stories that blew my socks off. I was shocked to learn that as a very young girl, she and her family came to Texas in two covered wagons. That was one of many stories she told me about her not so interesting life, but what astonished me the most was that during her short lifetime, man went from traveling in covered wagons to walking on the moon. How could that happen so fast?

The role of librarians and information-handling has made just as wide a leap in progression this past century-- from the manual organization and processing of books within the physical shelves and four walls of the library with the librarian as the gatekeeper of information... evolving to instant and virtual access to books and unfathomable amounts of information via the World Wide Web. The walls of the library have expanded to global proportions; books and information are no longer fenced in shelves and card catalogs and the knowledge of the librarian. It's free range information now.

Librarians have progressively changed with the times and are now trained as information specialists and information drivers' ed instructors, if you will, when it comes to teaching students how to navigate and evaluate copious amounts of information. But unfortunately, the perception of the role of librarians has not evolved with the actual skills of 21st Century librarians, and too many highly-skilled librarians are being labeled and discarded as 20th Century dinosaurs.

What is falling by the wayside with the elimination of librarians is the quality control of information and the teaching of information evaluation. Since librarians were replaced with paraprofessionals in the libraries of my previous school district, I'm not sure anyone is teaching the students this important skill now.

I see a dangerous correlation between the Dark Ages of ignorance with the information illiteracy of today when it comes to manipulating people's thoughts and actions. If students and people in general don't know how to evaluate information sources, they are liable to believe anything that comes down the pike-- via Internet or the media. The Asiana pilot names hoax is a prime example of this. How many hoax information emails and Facebook posts are still being circulated as truth? It's understandable, but not excusable, that many adults who came into the computer age after their formal school years missed learning how to evaluate an information source, but what is even more inexcusable is too many schools are still churning out information illiterates who are prone to making bad choices based on bad information. They will always be at risk of manipulation in any area of their lives if they don't know how to recognize the difference between misinformation and truth.

When librarians are removed from education, the quality of information and information literacy suffers. Our students have access to more information since the turn of this century than all of the combined information from recorded history up until then. But that doesn't mean they are knowledgeable and competent when it comes to information evaluation, and I'd have to say the same for too many parents and educators who think Google is the new librarian. Google is an enormous ocean of good, bad, truthful, biased, and downright dishonest information, and to say Google takes the place of libraries and librarians now is like intellectually living on the Titanic thinking all is well in the information world.

To say Google takes the place of libraries and librarians is like intellectually traveling on the Titanic thinking all is well in the information world.

I'm sounding a distress signal here. Hope somebody picks it up before it's too late.