Role of Librarians

[Janet Kaul]

> 
> 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.
> 
> (-:
> 
> Donald A. Barclay 
> New Mexico State University Library     always the beautiful answer
> dbarclay at lib.nmsu.edu                   who asks a more beautiful question 
>                                                     --e.e. cummings
> 
> 

Surely a false analogy? Again, you're talking about a change in the
format, not a change in the accessing and logging of it. I think a
closer one would be to see if the switch from radio to tv or live
theatre to movies ended the listings of entertainment. Nope, radio
listings changed to TV Guide, and theatre listings moved to movie
listings (although I would argue the fact that live theatre is dead,
having several tickets to plays in the near future).

I think it IS true that if librarians don't move quickly to make their
presence felt in the new technology, they will be replaced by a new
breed, but the need to filter, arrange, and log information is always
there, no matter what the information format. Hence books are readily
available outside of libraries and in libraries, but people still use
librarians to sort and catalog and help them find information. And
libraries did not die with the transfer from papyrus to paper, with
the invention of the printing press, or the advent of desktop publishing,
all of which increased the flow and format of information enormously.

And I also wish people would quit mentioning the different formats
of info on the Internet, as if libraries didn't already catalog multiple
formats.

Librarians are guides to information. The more information, the more
you need a guide. It's not like people are getting better at discerning
the value of information, and the world at large still has no access to
the Internet, which is another role the library must serve, at least
temporarily. (Of course, I'm in California, where most of the school
libraries have been closed, so I may be jaundiced on the first point.)

I think a more interesting question will be censorship. There has
always been implicit censorship in the functioning of libraries, and
with the amount of information coming out now, this will only get
worse.  The standards for selection (which in this case will be
standards for selection for cataloging, not actual purchasing
selection) are going to have to be seriously re-examined in light of
availability and consumer expectations.

Another interesting point: I used to read a lot of science fiction.
In most books where information was mentioned, there was still some
form of library or librarian. Seems even sci-fi writers have a hard
time visualizing a world without libraries. But maybe that's because
they are writers, and thereby closely linked to an information medium?


-Janet Kaul
 Internet Librarian
 Synopsys