Role of librarians

[R124C41 at aol.com]

>> Remember we already agreed that the real content of the >>internet is 
>> people.

>I didn't agree on this... nope... not a bit. 

And neither did I.  Nor did, I suspect, a lot of other folks.

I would think that web sites would evolve to the point where some are
considered reference sites in the style of government depositories.  And that
people who want their citations to be not quite so ephermal will cite
documents in those reference sites.

Other web sites will simply not care...perhaps their concerns will be
maintaining Personals columns where one netperson can meet another netperson.

It's probably considered pretty obvious to say this in this crowd but the
document management / MIS crowd is a little less aware of the fact that
putting something that does have value up in electronic form is a committment
to migrating that electronic document through whatever electronic storage
systems that come and go over the natural life of the document.  Librarians
have done this for years with respect to electronic catalogs.  It is also
needed for documents that go electronic.

Ideally, reference sites such as mentioned above will maintain and migrate
the ability to cite--now, a raw url is given as a bib reference...but ideally
the bib reference itself would be given and translated per whatever the
current technology requires--be it URL, URN, or whatever.

--David Ritchie
--R124C41 at AOL.COM
--Naperville, IL USA