Evolving Roles of Librarians: Juggling Print and Electronic Collections While Making Meaningful Connections

The traditional role of librarians has long been to support the university’s needs through instruction, collection development, and research assistance. Pittsburg State University’s challenge has been to balance our print and electronic collections at a university whose programs sometimes do not draw enough on library resources while also creating meaningful connections with students and faculty. In an effort to increase the relevancy of our collections and create meaningful connections with the university community, we have been actively creating opportunities for patrons to create content in the library. This has allowed users to engage with library resources and services in a new and different way while helping to shape the space. The goal is to make users content creators and empower them to be invested in the future development of the library space. This approach allows us to share with students, faculty, and staff the wide variety of library resources and services that can be both informative and fun