Libraries
of different types emphasize functions and customize their content for
different goals and constituencies. Universities have academic libraries
to teach informatively, so informing and teaching go hand-in-hand. An
academic library both informs and teaches: the difference is degree of
intensity, time management, content packaging or design by purpose, and
formal programming. Another difference is individualized information
gathering vs. group instruction. In academic library circles, the subject
of information access, retrieval, synthesis, and use is called Information
Literacy.
Informing to Learn
Uninformed learning occurs all the time, but it is not the hallmark of an educated person. Higher education is learning beyond one’s personal experience. This learning is based on more and better information than persons less educated. The pursuit of a quality higher education therefore depends on equal opportunity to inform oneself and to be informed or well taught. This in turn rests on expertise and experts who make things happen, i.e., faculty; well designed programs of instruction, well administered; and accessible information—available and deliverable, organized, refreshed, and varied for choice in viewpoint, content, and presentation. That is, a good library.
How to use a library—real and virtual, physical and digital, onsite and remote, direct or mediated for life-long learning, is essential. A teaching library does not simply inform, it teaches people how to inform themselves. It does not simply support an academic program; it is itself an academic organism coterminous with the university itself.
Learning to Know
Learning when one needs to know something is an art, almost intuitive, but it can be taught. Like being hungry and eating for well being, needing to know and informing oneself are essential for intellectual life. Learning to use libraries is useless unless use becomes habitual. One might explore new content in them, but libraries should not be foreign spaces to educated people. They need to be the “third space” often compared with places of worship and reflection, or a park that is a cultural space offering an alternative to workplace or home. Regardless of ambience, they need to bring learners together with information resources and knowledgeable, helpful people, who inform and teach.
Knowing to Act
Unapplied knowledge is useless except for self-edification. It helps
no one unless communicated. In a continuing cycle learning refreshes
our knowledge and builds our libraries for future use. Knowing to use
a library should ultimately result in other action; or in today’s
jargon, a learning library is pro-active—informing yes,
teaching certainly, and caring, absolutely.
Lawrence J. McCrank
Dean, LIS
