When Monroe High School librarian Lorraine Monprode took her first job, she was checking out filmstrips and cassette tape players. She knew when a class report on World War I was due because a clutch of students fought over the same volume of the encyclopedia.
Flash forward about 25 years. Monprode guides students researching World War I bunkers to online resources that include video tours of actual bunkers, audio recollections of soldiers who fought in the war, and hyperlinks to other electronic sources, all at the same time a classmate on another library computer searches the same materials.
But here’s the irony; now that students need research guidance more than ever, The Seattle Times reports: In the age of information overload, librarians say their skills at finding authoritative and accurate sources and helping students think critically about what they read are more important than ever. But some districts around Washington state, including Darrington and Granite Falls, have cut librarian positions to balance their budgets.
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