Digital Advocacy: Using Interactive Technologies to Reassert Library Value

There is a refrain that winds throughout the recent literature of library advocacy related to the question of why libraries need advocacy and why they need it now more than ever. In The Visible Librarian, Judith A. Siess observes, "Information at the desktop is no longer necessarily connected to a library or librarian in the user's mind. We are becoming more and more 'invisible'". In an article in Knowledge Quest, Ann Martin asserts, "As America entered the information age, libraries were no longer being pictured as a vital part of family life. Instead, technology became the critical resource for a middle-class family." The American Library Association's Library Advocate's Handbook comments, "Technology has greatly enhanced library and information services. It has also raised disturbing questions". The refrain, of course, is tied to the concern among librarians that the majority of the American population prefers to get their information from the internet, and that they no longer see value in libraries because they don't see libraries in the places where they're searching for information.