“Our job is to select, acquire, describe, make accessible and disseminate preserved knowledge,” Drabinski added. “That’s the whole project. So if technology changes the way things are distributed, we change with it.”
Librarians can also use TikTok to spread trustworthy information on a platform full of manipulated content. “It’s a space that requires critical information skills,” said Jessie Loyer, an academic librarian in Calgary, Alberta, who posts on topics like digital sovereignty and repatriation on TikTok under the name @IndigenousLibrarian.
“Librarians have always been involved in helping people figure out what’s real, what’s relevant,” Loyer added. So TikTok, she said, is “a necessary space to be in, and a useful tool.”
Not everyone agrees with the idea of librarians posting on TikTok. Some library directors and boards find some TikTok accounts unprofessional, Vickers said. And some librarians are ambivalent about encouraging young people to use the platform. Elizabeth Miller, 22, a youth services librarian at the Rehoboth Beach Public Library in Rehoboth Beach, Del., said that while TikTok can help people make friends and discover hobbies, the app isn’t always a healthy environment for adolescents.
But others, including Kankakee Public Library librarians, are finding that TikTok also allows them to engage with the community in person. The library often collaborates with local figures, including the mayor. “He’s always excited to do it,” says Greer, who helps make the videos. The library has plans to make TikToks with cheerleaders and the drama club at the local high school next year.
“We may not make them readers this year or next year,” said her colleague Mary Bass, 30, assistant youth care supervisor and director of the Kankakee library. “But they’ll know we’re here when they grow up.”
