Librarians wear many hats under one umbrella. They are teachers, instructors, tour guides, motivators, and leaders for the library clients. Librarians are responsible for informing and educating the public about new changes that take place in the collection development. As librarians, what do we do?
We must keep up with the ever-changing trends to meet the learning needs of the clients for various learning purposes. Librarians demonstrate how to use the library services such as how to search for a book, journals, media resources, and newspapers using the Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC).
Additionally, librarians teach library clients how to identify what databases are related to a particular subject area for research. We instruct library users on how to identify popular magazines from research journals and free leisure reading materials. Students need to understand the difference between what is known as Scholarly Peer-Reviews materials and web-based information. Librarians are responsible for informing library users upon request of the difference between search engines and research databases.
Librarians are faculty instructors with the task of teaching Library Bibliographic Instructions. They are given a mission to assist library clients in understanding where one may find information within the library to locate items to write or conduct research. Librarians are held accountable to let the library user know what materials are held within each sectional department. For example, What materials can be found in the Government Document Department, Archives/Special Collection, General Collection, Periodical/Journal Collection, and what databases are available to retrieve full-text scholarly peer-reviewed articles?
Librarians are great team players within the educational career community. When librarians and faculty collaborate to promote learning, the view of learning excels to a higher level. We are advocators to help enhance what is being taught within the classroom. The qualification of a librarian includes good communication skills, good listening skills, understanding library language, being able to answer the library patron’s questions clearly, and clearly explaining how to use the library resources. The library unit is a place where students can study with ease, use library resources and tools, meet and greet other students with the same interests, and share common goals and ideas.
