Working with libraries for a healthier information ecosystem

I had a lot of fun recently in discussion with young librarians and a dynamic panel how we can build a healthier information ecosystem. We can use the skills, knowledge and role of librarians to empower communities and raise community resilience to the infodemic. Check out the #EmergingInternationalVocies for worldwide librarians, supported by IFLA and Goethe Institut.

Here is the link to the webinar recording and below are some of my thoughts on the role of libraries and librarians in empowering communities and working for resilience to the infodemic.

#1 Libraries are trusted community places that connect people.

I think physical or digital library spaces have not yet received enough recognition for the impact they are making in the communities especially, and therefore the impact they can make to promote access to information and resilience during COVID-19 pandemic.

Libraries can do so many things: educate, build literacy, be trusted places for people to get vaccinated or receive other health or social services. For example, they can be places to help people find jobs, early childhood education, and help newcomers learn local languages and customs.

When people that you trust share misinformation or low quality information, this adds credibility to it. We let our guard down around family, friends and colleagues. Often COVID-19 outbreaks occur in clusters because people let their guard down. So in the same way that we practice hand and cough hygiene, we should be practicing information hygiene. I think libraries are trusted digital/physical spaces for finding health information, but also for discussing this information hygiene, information and media literacy skills, with individual people and with communities.

 #2 Library and information sciences professionals can help the science community and the public to undertand science. Librarians have an important role to play in the way science in done, curated and communicated.

We have seen that the pandemic has eroded public trust in experts, partly because COVID-19 is a fast moving area of science in which understanding is constantly changing. Scientists have historically not had to explain to the public how the scientific knowledge and processes work, or why people change their minds with new evidence. Now that process is visible to all. An abundance of new communication channels and self-appointed experts are creating confusion around what information is real and what can be trusted.

We all should be mindful of our responsibility to science and evidence, but also of our accountability to the public on the way science and scientific process are communicated and explained. The scientific community and research journals need to do their part in how preprints are explained, and how limitations of studies are explained and accessible in plain language to more audiences. Scientists and science communicators have been discussing this.

But librarians, with their skillsets, need to be part of the conversations about open science and also link up into conversations about science communication and media and information studies. The internet started as a large catalog of information, and it has morphed into a personalised experience driven by commercial interests of those that invest in tools and platforms that make up the content highways of the internet. It's important to cut through information overload and have skills to use the good of the internet and help fix the not-so-good. Library and information science professionals have evolved along with the changing digitised society, and can be allies in tackling the infodemic.

I see here a special role for librarians with specialist backgrounds who work in settings like schools or medical libraries, and who also can offer infodemic management resources appropriate to their audiences. Promoting open science and good practices for evidence appraisal are critical to ensure that discussions in the public and communities know fact from misinformation.

Poor information nowadays is responsible for poorer health and well-being across the world. In this sense, I see libraries and librarians as trusted spaces and trusted professionals in communities that, just like community health workers, can be a major ally and partner in building longer term resilience to the infodemic and to help communicate science.