“I want to provide patrons with good information”

Patrons often come to the library with specific problems at hand. One of these being health questions. As a result, librarians face the dilemma of wanting to supply good and factual information without overstepping their bounds. Librarians are not medical professionals and cannot dispense medical advice. Furthermore, what is the librarian to do when the patron seeks medical information that isn’t scientifically vetted?

The main issue is, that if the patron is coming to the public library for medical advice, that these patrons often have a lack of knowledge that they’re seeking to fulfill and cannot fully articulate the questions that they have. In these cases, physical resources are better because the patrons in question were not tech savvy or did not have access to technology. Researchers found that additional training for the librarians was always beneficial. Furthermore, for librarians that come across this issue often, it is wise to create partnerships with medical libraries that may have additional resources and staff that can answer more questions for the patron.

Rubenstein, E.L. (2018). “I want to provide patrons with good information”: Public library staff as health information facilitators. Library Quarterly, 88(2), 125-141. Doi:10.1086/696579

Sacred Stacks: The Higher Purpose of Libraries and Librarianship by Nancy Kalikow Maxwell, MLS

St. Jerome in his Study, 1480 - By Domenico Ghirlandaio - 
Italian Artist - Ognissanti, Florence, Italy - SAINTS - 1480 - fresco

DiBello, Amy

Maxwell, N. (2006). Sacred stacks: The higher purpose of libraries and librarianship. 

Chicago: American Library Association.

Nancy Kalikow Maxwell, MLS, M.A., is a Jewish librarian who maximized

her time during her tenure at the Catholic University, Barry University,

by getting a degree in Catholic theology.Her book Sacred Stacks: 
The Higher Purpose of Libraries and Librarianship is a treatise about the 
spiritual and sacred qualities of libraries and librarianship.

Maxwell begins with an examination of how many Americans identify as

"spiritual, but not religious". The sacred and secular blend of libraries is something

most library patrons have identified and expressed to me over the years.

I also consider libraries to be sacred and feel blessed to have meaningful work

in our admirable profession.

There are the patron saints of librarianship to look up to St. Jerome,

St. Catherine of Alexandria, and most notably St. Lawrence,

who would not surrender the archives to Imperial Roman officials in 258 BCE,

which resulted in his being grilled alive. St. Lawrence is famous for telling

his torturers that he was done on one side and to turn him over.

Sacred Stacks equates librarians as confessors through the art of the reference

interview and social justice warriors fiercely protecting patrons' privacy.

Melvil Dewey, creator of his famous Dewey decimal classification system

referred to the education of librarians as “the suburbs of the holy field.”

Librarians do not have supernatural powers, such as parting the Red Sea,

but their knowledge and instincts with cataloging, classification and

saving patrons from drowning in fruitless Google searches, earns Maxwell’s

accolades of “Representing the universe of knowledge through organized systems

for thousands of years.”