John Pabst, a student in the Diablo Valley College library tech partnership program, doubles as a teacher and a librarian at an Oakland elementary school.

“I have the instruction and curriculum part down,” being a credentialed teacher, he said, but needed to learn the best practices of accessing, cataloging and disseminating information.

Now, thanks to a DVC library technology program, Pabst is learning the tools to put his students together with the information they need.

DVC teamed with the Oakland Unified School District earlier this year to train 17 district employees in the library technology certificate program.

While the program is designed specifically for Oakland school district employees, the library tech certificate and degree programs for DVC students will return in January 2017.

The updated DVC library tech program will include more content on digital tools and new media to keep pace with the fast-changing information environment, Andy Kivel, DVC library faculty member, said.

With information being stored in everything from photograph folios to film archives to the Cloud, library users rely on information specialists, such as library techs, to help them navigate a vast range of media.

“Libraries still provide a lot of really core and important services and functions for people,” Kivel said.

For young readers, libraries serve as important springboards for literacy, Ann Gallagher, former district librarian of  Oakland public schools wrote with her colleagues in a paper on the state of district libraries. Citing recent research, she wrote that reading scores and literacy levels rise when children can freely choose reading materials that interest them.

“We can teach our students to search for books in the library that are close to their level without limiting their choice,” Gallagher and her colleagues wrote. “The whole library experience is meant to be supportive of children’s interests and respectful of their right to choose, or we will not see a love for reading develop in our students.”

With the explosion in information media, the demand for library technologists is expected to increase 12 percent between 2012 and 2022 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“Information professionals are trained to help information users find and make sense of information,” Pabst said. “Information instruction is critical at all levels and in all neighborhoods.”

Students interested in the library technology program are invited to meet faculty and former students at an open house Wednesday, Nov. 9th from 4:30-6:30 p.m. in the DVC Library, L-218. RSVP at dvc.edu/_sandbox/library-technology/index.html