Five: How Librarians Can Support Journalists

Librarians can and do support journalists now, but lack of awareness and time on the part of journalists prevent it from happening more often.

One basic way that librarians can better support journalists is by training them on what resources and databases are available to them with a library card.

• Sarah Houghton has done this before at the San Rafael Public Library and seen the local impact.
• April Hines recently presented on this topic for the National Press Club Journalism Institute.

Journalists can use academic library resources at public universities, but licensing restrictions require that access be limited to guests who are physically on campus.

• Might there be a way to develop some kind of digital “press pass” so journalists could have remote access to databases at local/regional universities?
• Some journalists know they are not fully leveraging library resources. Sarah Asch mentioned talks in her newsroom about how they could better use archival resources, for example. That said, the type of deep reporting for which these resources would be most helpful happens infrequently.

“When I was a working journalist, I worked in Northwest Indiana. We actually had several universities nearby, and they were public universities, but I never had any idea that that could have been a resource for me. And so that was really interesting to me now as a librarian, because I actually would love to reach more journalists and help them, because I do work at a public institution here.”

– Teresa Schultz

“I don’t even use librarians to the extent that I should for things that I’m working on. And I feel like for me, of all people, there should be like the least barrier to entry. I should feel like the most comfortable of anyone reaching out to librarians to help me with what I’m working on, but I don’t often do it. I’m working on a book proposal right now and it occurred to me that I could do that recently. But as a freelancer, independent person, it’s just like, I’m used to kind of being like blocked out of the institutional stuff. But there’s still a lot of ways librarians could help me.”

– kate (k.e.) harloe