I was faced with a question today from a student asking if I could help them find information about sink holes for a Geography assessment task. I actually found this particular student wandering through the shelves of the non-fiction section trying to find what she was after. After checking the database together (and found that our library was lacking in such resources – another issue to be faced another day) she decided to set herself loose on the world wide web.

This interaction got me thinking about the information landscape and my role as a teacher librarian. I think back to how I would have researched at high school and it looks very different now. Students no longer drag heavy volumes of encyclopaedias off the shelf or search the CD-ROM of Encyclopaedia Britannica. Instead, they search through a few taps on the keyboard and a click of the mouse. However, after these taps and clicks, a mountain of information on a particular topic appears. Price (2015) sums it up very neatly. “Today, our best estimates suggest that at least 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is produced every day.”

To get my head around such a large number I had to research it.

(Quintillion Definition (Illustrated Mathematics Dictionary), 2018)

This is an enormous amount is information; A number so big that it is equal to a million million millions (Quintillion Definition (Illustrated Mathematics Dictionary), 2018). To say this is mind-boggling is an understatement. Remember, this number was produced in 2015. However, “by 2025, it’s estimated that 463 exabytes of data will be created each day globally – that’s the equivalent of 212,765,957 DVDs per day!” (Desjardins, 2019).

With that is mind, as librarians we need to be able to understand current information trends and this is a daunting task to say the least.

To assist students to navigate the information landscape effectively, teacher librarians need to have strong skills as information specialists (“What is a Teacher Librarian?”, 2019). TLs cannot possibly be able to be experts in all areas but need to be able to adapt to changing requirements in technology and needs of staff and students alike. As a result of these needs, TLs are required to be life-long learners in order to adapt and change with the adapting and changing information landscape of which we are all a part. We are the stepping-stone for students to learn how to navigate emerging areas of the information landscape and to equip them with the skills to sift through the vast amounts and types of information available, and to make discerning choices about what is useful and what is not.

During the week I came to the conclusion that the teacher librarian is an important link between students and their navigation of the information landscape. The variety of ways to access information has changed and will continue to change over time.

References

Desjardins, J. (2019). How Much Data is Generated Each Day?. Visual Capitalist. Retrieved 11 March 2021, from https://www.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-data-is-generated-each-day/.

Price, D. (2015). Facts and stats about the big data industry. Cloud Tweaks.

Quintillion Definition (Illustrated Mathematics Dictionary). Mathsisfun.com. (2018). Retrieved 10 March 2021, from https://www.mathsisfun.com/definitions/quintillion.html.

What is a Teacher Librarian?. Asla.org.au. (2019). Retrieved 10 March 2021, from https://asla.org.au/what-is-a-teacher-librarian.