Want Info about a Small Town? Hit the Library

June 6, 2018

For many, libraries are obsolete, deader than a Peruvian mummy. This is true for some, but if you live in a small town then libraries are far from dead. Big news outlets cover global issues, so they skip over small town stories. Small towns, however, still have news and the residents want to read it. Where do they go to get information when local newspapers dried up? They go to the local library. The Atlantic shares the story, “The Libraries Bringing Small-Town News Back To Life” and how the US’s smaller cities still rely on libraries as information centers.

Libraries have seen their budgets slashed, branches closed down, and the librarian profession has been traded for para-professionals. Yet people still go to libraries and even trust librarians over journalists and other news sources. Why? Librarians also understand the importance of accurate information and their sources.

Librarians have picked up the slack where local news sources fail or disappeared. In some towns, being a news source has increased participation at libraries. The write up stated:

“Various types of community building are happening across the nation. In some cities, libraries are partnering with established news sources, teaming up in Dallas to train high schoolers in news gathering or hosting a satellite studio in Boston for the public radio station WGBH. In San Antonio, the main library offers space to an independent video news site that trains students and runs a C-SPAN-style operation in America’s seventh-biggest city. (That site was the only video outlet covering a mayoral debate last year in which the incumbent mayor’s comments on poverty became a national story—and may have contributed to her electoral defeat.)”

Where once libraries use to store information, they are turning into the information source. They are also reinforcing important information literacy skills, which are in desperate need as fake news and instant search weakens people’s judgment skills.

Whitney Grace, June 6, 2018

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under News, Search

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.