How Library Leadership Has Changed in the Digital Age

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One of the many things that many people don’t realize about library leadership is how much the use and leadership of libraries has changed in this new digital age. There are many who do not want to interact with the library physically. Why do that when I have a world of information at my fingertips?


However, these people are looking at this the wrong way. What people should be looking at is how we can adapt libraries and how they are used into this new digital age. Before the access of information via the internet many people would show up at their local libraries and look through their collections and archives to find something—a lot of that seems unnecessary with many of these libraries digitizing these records. Now, in this new age of global access from anywhere, we as librarians now have to teach new kinds of researching skills.


Instead of showing patrons how to look and comb through printed materials, we now need to educate them on how to use a search engine and find the right information they need for their topic. What kind of search terms do I use to find a scholarly article about this? How do I access this report on the statistics I need?


These questions are the ones we as librarians must now use to help launch libraries into a new digital age of library work and media. According to Deanna Marcum, we must “[Develop] leaders with skill sets that bridge traditional and digital expertise” as in we must be able to show those who may know how to use a traditional library to research how to use those skills on digital libraries and archives.


Works Cited

Marcum, Deanna B. “Library Leadership for the Digital Age.” Information Services & 

Use, vol. 36, no. 1/2, Jan. 2016, pp. 105–11. EBSCOhost, https://doi-org.ezproxy.palomar.edu/10.3233/ISU-160796.

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