ER&L 2013

Special Conference Event

Digital resources, enterprise systems, and other networked library services provide unprecedented opportunities for librarians to collaborate, share resources, and to contribute local talent and expertise towards a broader community benefit. But it also calls into question the librarian’s role in the greater information ecology. This presentation will examine the concept of the networked librarian and how they can transforms library business operations, service offerings, and the library organization. To be an engaged and relevant in today’s networked world, librarians need to be thoughtful and intentional about the connections they make, the communities they engage and support, and how they contribute to their home institution's health and value by being a vested contributor to the greater library community. The value of the 21st librarian is not only based on how we link the communities we serve to relevant resources, tools, and expertise, but also how we support knowledge creation, teaching and learning. We need to take the hacker approach to our professional responsibilities, continually examining, breaking, rebuilding, connecting openly and honestly, in a shared community-based effort of striving towards improvement. Librarians need to engage the communities the serve through an agile process, creating on demand resources and services built through group contributions within the global library community. Libraries that take advantage and truly understand the network-effect and the impact of digital data, or better yet, those who develop software and services that engage crowd/ community-sourced opportunities will become hubs of expertise in the ever-increasing social network of scholarship.