The introduction of computers, online databases, and other technologies into the library has definitely had an effect on the role of the librarian. Librarians are teachers more than ever. We teach our patrons information literacy skills, technology skills, how to evaluate online information, how to do research, and often even how to organize concepts into an outline and from there into a research paper.

“The time was when a library was very much like a museum, and a librarian was a mouser in musty books.

The time is when a library is a school, and the librarian is in the highest sense a teacher.”

The source of that quote? Melvil Dewey, in his article “The Profession,” which was published in the first volume of the American Library Journal. In 1876!!