American Library Association President, Dr. Camila Alire, visited Salinas, California yesterday.
A presentation that she gave was covered by the The Salinas Californian.
From the Article:
She stressed the importance of reaching out to "millennials," while dropping phrases like wikis, tweeting and social networking.
"Santa gave me a Kindle," said Alire, former dean of the University of Colorado at Denver's libraries.
But it's not just about knowing Google search shortcuts. Librarians have to be "nimble," she said, in providing their communities with the tools to weather a sagging economy and — in Salinas, especially — target high illiteracy rates.
[Snip]
Like it or not, a lot of library learning now is done on the computer monitor, according to Alire. Ninety-nine percent of public libraries in America offer free Web surfing, she said, and 73 percent are the only institutions in their community that do.
Alire talked with a librarian in the Bay Area who found a woman crying in front of a library PC. The woman was embarrassed that she couldn't work the machine — her first time on a computer.
"Libraries are meeting a desperate need of making that technological connection with the community," Alire said.
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