To me, one of the most important parts of being a Librarian has always meant helping people to find the information they want, either from the library they are in or from another source using skills learnt to search the resources available.
Since the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web everything has changed. There is so much information available it is difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff.
Yesterday I was sent this link which reports on an example of the new skills that Librarians have to learn now and how these can be shared.
http://digital.vpr.net/post/greene-navigating-internet#stream/0
The librarian says:
…it’s no longer a question of there not being enough information out there, but of there being too much. “There’s more filtering in the librarian’s job now,….People need help discerning good solid sources from the rest.”
The report goes on to describe a group tutorial of searching for information and sorting out what is appropriate and what is not, lead by a librarian. All involved were very pleased with the results.
I am not sure how much of this sort of help is available to those studying and researching Conductive Education. It is not a subject with much academic interest or publication and most of what is available on-line is not of the best quality.
Meeting users’ needs was an aspect that I really enjoyed when I was working as a librarian in Conductive Education and my knowledge of the library holdings and methods of searching usually bore the right fruit.
I hope that I can still do this with my knowledge of the subject, limited physical resources, the virtual library catalogue, and connection to the Internet.