Shaping Our Future: A Look into moving into the Digital Age

For my first blog entry here I chose ‘Shaping the Curriculum: The Power of a Library’s Digital Resource’ by Patricia Kirkwood, an article from Computers in Libraries (Volume 31; Number 4; Page 6; May 2011) to be the first article to grace my space.

In this article Patricia Kirkwood talks about students’ needs for easy to access electronic references. She explains how libraries would be a more integral part of schooling communities if they offered these digital resources to students and staff in ways that are easy for them to access, understand and explore as in her experience she had seen numerous students using untrustworthy online resources because they found it difficult to locate the trusted sources they should have been using. Kirkwood even explains the steps she takes to better incorporate digital resources into the University of Arkansas where she works.

Kirkwood’s story here was quite fascinating. It was interesting to read about the problems her institute faced and what she came up with to improve the situation. Learning about the different ways these new resources can be integrated into libraries and school curriculums was both interesting and, I personally believe, very important. To see how she slowly incorporates more and more digital resources like electronic textbooks and data sets. It’s essential that we, as librarians, know how to move our industry further into the new age lest we be left behind in the dust and Kirkwood does a great job of starting our education of how we can do this.

- LibraryFox91                                 aka, Sam.