Librarians: Digital Age heroes

Anyone who thinks all we need is Google or a parent of any such person might enjoy reading a Des Moines Register article about that city's reference heroes. There's Deborah Kolb, who "has worked at the Central Library since 1972. She says that young people seem startled that everything can't be found via Google" - so she takes them, for example, to "a relic - the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature - to look up old magazine articles on Woodstock for a school report." And there's the awful but revealing (of what librarians have to deal with) account of how "35-year library veteran Dorothy Kelley" managed the rescue of a 20-month-old child whom "a convicted sex offender" grabbed and dragged to the library men's room (police later said the "the library staff conducted a 'masterful tactical response'"). The staff later received a plant and a note from grateful "Des Moines mothers." And there's "Pam Deitrick, a librarian who started working here part-time in high school in 1969. When a parent dies, she helps the grieving caller try to remember the name of the song he wants to play at the funeral." As for everyday heroism, though, the Register rightfully points out that it's because we're so awash in information these days that we need librarians more than ever.