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1. Introduction
Librarians are professionals who underwent formal training responsible for the management and protection of library collections including selecting, processing, organizing, preserving and disseminating such library materials needed by their users. Another responsibility they have is to educate and instruct users on how to access information in any kind of format (Reitz, 2014). However, librarians as professionals lack prestige and the general populace has a lack of awareness of the library field (Seminelli, 2016). Recruitment and retention of students to take library and information science (LIS) is a great feat to consider as a low number of applicants acknowledge the program. A study revealed in Canada that 60% of freshmen believe that no academic training is needed by librarians (Seminelli, 2016). Librarians struggle to be appreciated as professionals. The profession continues to uplift the status of librarianship globally, however, the impact of their roles and responsibilities continue to face more difficulties.
More recently, the profession has been faced with tremendous challenges concerning not only their professional identity but also their knowledge practices when the post-truth era has emerged to be one of the problematic issues that face reliable information such as fake news content (Affelt, 2019; Cooke, 2018; Revez and Corujo, 2021). Social media is one of the most difficult mediums to counter false information (Burkhardt, 2017). In social media, people can share news, content and information instantly with less evaluation. Information shared on social media appeals to different emotions of people and the less you evaluate, the more you become a victim of fake news. These threats involving the misuse and misinterpretation of information are now a challenge for librarians.
We face a growing international crisis of truth, where false information spreads rapidly through national and international channels. Libraries, with their longstanding tradition of fostering democracy and providing equal access to verified information, are uniquely positioned to combat this threat on a personal level (Taylor et al., 2021). Cooke (2021) believes that a cornerstone of democracy is the freedom to choose who we listen to and form our own beliefs. While it allows for independent thought, it also makes us susceptible to confirmation bias, the tendency to favor information that aligns with our existing beliefs. Ideally, with access to education and critical...