Role of Librarians

[Jon Hill]

On Wed, 18 Oct 1995, Donald A. Barclay wrote:

> I think that the Internet means the absolute end of libraries and 
> librarians. My analogy will demonstrate.
> 
> Before television came on the scene, there was this thing 
> called radio that gave only words but not pictures.  As soon as 
> television came along, everyone stopped listening to radio, radio 
> stations all went out of business, and everyone working in radio had to 
> get jobs in other fields.  In much the same way, the Internet means the 
> end of libraries and everyone working in them.
> 
> If you don't like this analogy, I can tell you the one about how the 
> advent of movies ended live theatre.
> 
Dear DOnald,

Poppycock.

Radio has no more died than has live theatre or live attendance at sports.

Although radio figures are not as high as at there heyday, many millions 
listen to a whole range of raduio stations every day, there are many 
occasions when television is not appropriate or wanted.  Some of us only 
watch television when the children want to, and tend to have the radio on 
far more often.

Radio is still big business and always will be, its actually a growth 
market at the moment in the UK, with large non media corporations 
starting into the business for the first time this way.

Many thousands of people go to live theatre every day, not evrything in 
the cinema is wonderful, and there's no pleasure like going to see a live 
performance, going to the cinema or watching TV does not compare, and I'm 
sure many others on this list will agree.

Librarians will always be required for a plethora of work, just not in 
the same ways they are required now.  Perhaps cataloguing will not be 
required, but someone will still needs to identify relevant sources of 
information, identify where the relevant e-journals stored, which 
e-hjournals cover the topic of interest, perform specialist searchesa and 
so on.

It's up to the profession tos ell its usefullness to the remaining 
population, particularly academia and business, since they will no longer 
have a captive audience but will have to prove the usefullness.

This erhaps will mean many thousands having to change the focus of 
employment, and taking on a much finer role of service provider.  Don't 
forget though that IT trained personnel will be in competion for this 
type of work so librarians need to hone the skills in the relevant areas 
and be prepared.

How many libraries out there now employ IT staff in roles to provide 
electronic services to librarians, and how many librarians do it.  It's 
no longer necessary to be LIS trained in order to work in this side of a 
library since technical skills are as important as LIS skills.

Librarianship will not die, it will merely go through a downsizing and 
re-tarining process.

By the way, how may people out there prefer books for some things than 
e-books.  Well, who'll need to look after these, it's going to be 40-60 
years before paper media is no longer significant to the general poulation.

And not all books will be fed in, many thousands will still only be 
available in archives, admittedly these archives will not be the same 
size as the libraries are now.

anyway, just a quick note about the subject.

Regards

***********************************************************************
* Jonathan R. Hill (aka Jon, Vicki and Fireball)                      *
* Library Network Officer - Kimberlin Library, De Montfort University *
* EMail - jh at dmu.ac.uk                                                *
* Telephone - 0116-2551-551 ex 8033                                   *
*                                                                     *
* If mankind is the ultimate result of evolution after 4 Billion      *
* Years, It goes to show that having patience doesn't pay off in the  *
* end.                                                                *
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