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"Major stewards of storytelling": pre-service librarians' perspectives on librarians' roles in 21st century storytelling

This poster presents an ongoing, exploratory study of pre-service librarians' perspectives on storytelling in libraries. Storytelling is a frequent program offering in public and school libraries, and a background in storytelling equips librarians with skills that will enrich their work with library patrons of all ages. As such, Storytelling is offered as an elective course for library and information science (LIS) graduate students. In this study, students who were enrolled in a graduate-level LIS course on storytelling were invited to contribute their electronic discussion board assignments from the course to a research study conducted by the course instructor. Along with focus group responses, the discussion board posts were analyzed to (1) explore students' perspectives on storytelling in 21st century libraries and their roles in storytelling as future librarians and (2) to inform instruction of storytelling in LIS graduate programs. Initial findings show that students identify a need to maintain storytelling traditions with careful incorporation of 21st century technologies.