Role of librarians

[skindrf1]

On Sat, 21 Oct 1995 TravLib1 at aol.com wrote:
> When it comes to protecting our surf, the hair on our necks certainly rises
> quickly at the thought that the internet may be putting us out of business.
> Bull. 

Please!  The only person who ever suggested that
librarians were going out of business was one 
person who posted a sarcastic analogy about radio
and television.  And, in case it isn't clear by
now, he did not mean it -- he was joking.

The interesting questions are still:

* How does the Internet affect librarianship
* What are the directions for the future
* How can librarians ensure that their future is
  the future they want?
* How should librarians treat the Internet?

Then again, maybe this isn't the best place for
these questions -- but it is nice to see them
coming up once in a while.


Carlos McEvilly
cim at lanl.gov


************************************************************************
I think that this list is a great place to talk about the above questions and I 
look forward to hearing responses.  If no one minds I'd like to take a shot at 
a couple of them.  Just to set the stage, I work in the library at the Applied 
Physics Laboratory, Johns Hopkins University, basically a special library 
concerned with engineering and physics, not an academic library.

About a year and a half ago, I began fooling around with the Internet.  This 
was just prior to the first appearance of Mosaic.  It wasn't long after that 
when I realized that I could answer reference questions without going to the 
reference collection.  I remember that the first question I answered had 
something to do with the cost of living in six different cities.  I imagine 
that everyone on this list has a similar story.

One thing was readily apparent and that was than Internetting was not going to 
be intuitive.  Because we are dealing with very busy scientists and engineers 
at APL, this library has always tried to become involved and provide services 
beyond what I had seen elsewhere.  It was felt that since the Internet was 
going to be difficult to navigate, it would be good if we could do something to 
smooth the way for our clientele.  What we finally came up with was the 
Information Navigation System or INS.  Basically it was a bunch of corporate 
HotLists or Bookmarks.  Our idea was that we would act exactly like librarians 
always have;find the pertinent stuff, eliminate material that didn't relate, 
evaluate and then organize it. We started with sections on just those subjects 
that we collected in paper.  Then we expanded to the places and organizations 
that our scientific staff were likely to want to visit.  We collected 
newsgroups and listservs that were applicable and built a pretty nice reference 
section and a continually evolving collection of search engines.  If you are 
interested in this, there was an article in the July August issue of Online.

The next effort that we became involved  with was in interdepartmental trainng 
group.  There were a couple of librarians, a few computer people, some training 
folks and a writer.  We went through a few rough starts but now we have a full 
day class 2, 3 or 4 times a month.  Its turned out to be pretty popular and 
we've met a lot of people this way and since the librarians teach 3/4 of the 
class, the library gets good exposure.

That's what weve done as librarians.  Obviously the Internet has affected some 
of our lives.  I think that we have at least made an attempt to insure our 
future by doing what I described above.  Quite frankly it has gotten a little 
out of hand.  We originally committed to teach 3 classes and now it seems to be 
about 20 with no sign of a let up.

The future.  One thing that we are involved in is pretty interesting and that 
is tryiung to link diverse parts of the lab together.  Lots of departments have 
home pages but we are trying to go beyond this to programs where people in 
other areas can see what is happening throughout the lab.  This is all in house 
and behind a firewall but useful since we are six or eight departments in 
twenty-odd buildings on 350 acres.  The neat thing about this is that you can 
connect in-house resources together and then link them to external resources.

The last question was about treating the Internet.  I am just continually 
amazed at its usefulness.  In our classes, my approach is to use lab related 
exercises and I am astounded at what you can find that is really useful and 
pertinent.

Pretty windy, huh?  I'd sure like to hear what other folks are doing relative 
to the above questions.

Bob Skinder
Library - JHU/APL
410-792-6000 ext. 4685
skindrf1 at teomail.jhuapl.edu