Manitoba Libraries Conference

The concept of libraries and their impact upon the development of society is unquestionable. In the past, a library could serve as a local meeting place for students, community members and the general public. Today, the library has evolved to serve as an all encompassing platform for a wider variety of information, and for a larger diverse audience of students and the general public. Over the past thirty years, citizens and society have been bombarded with more information than any other previous generation. Many writers have acknowledged this impending challenge as a crisis of information and the inevitable impact of technology. Hade (1982) nearly thirty-five years ago, also questioned this conundrum: "to know means to have access to the informational process. Possession is replaced by access" (as cited in Lennox and Walker, 1993, p. 312). However, how we access information and how we interpret it has also come under intense speculation. Palfrey (2015) provides a more succinct argument by suggesting that modern libraries should evolve in their role from a collector to a steward in this new information age. What impact and new roles does this imply for the modern library? "The distinction between stewards and collectors will become more important, not less so, over time. New knowledge today, in contrast to what has come before, is largely born digital" (pp. 33-34).