Challenges & Traits for 21st Century Libraries/Librarians

Last night in LIS701: Introduction to Library and Information Science, we discussed our five “context” books. Last semester we did this too. The books read this time were:

Anderson, C. (2006). The Long Tail
Beck, J., & Wade, M. (2004). Got Game:
Ehrenreich, B. (2001). Nickel and Dimed
Pink, D. (2005). A whole New Mind
Weinberger, D. (2007). Everything is Miscellaneous

We debriefed after two rounds of discussion and the class offered these challenges and traits: (Book titles are noted where applicable)

Challenges for 21st Century Libraries
• ability to meet niche markets that affect so much information (LT)
• providing public assistance for all who need it(ND)
• finding space for all types of users [i.e. gamers] (GG)

Traits of 21st Century Librarians
• understanding metadata and access (misc)
• findability (misc)
• design thinking (wnm)
• Empathy (wnm)
• Story teller (wnm)
• multi taskers
• adaptable to rapidly changing technology
o scanning the horizon/ trendspotting

Thanks to Katharine for transcribing the chalkboard!