Librarians are experiencing new ways of storing, arranging, and disseminating information. Listservs and web pages may seem like gimmicks. A lot of people thought the same thing about computerized library catalogs until they realized they could search those catalogs from remote locations any time of the day or night. Listservs and Web pages, used in the service of higher education, provide similar opportunities for distributing access to interactions and resources which have typically been confined to the classroom. The Internet is seductive.
Librarians are aware of that seductive power and are front-line advocates of critical thinking.
We are the natural allies of faculty who are concerned about producing a citizenry capable of sorting through arguments, advertisements, and propaganda and arriving at well-founded conclusions so they can make rational and compassionate decisions that affect their lives and the lives of those around them. We are well-versed in these issues. We know how to get these points across to students in ways that they can understand and in ways that are relevant to the world in which they live. Traditional methods for determining what students have learned may no longer suffice. Let's finally kill the library scavenger hunt, unless it designed with clear pedagogical intent and student success in mind.