Do librarians need basic HTML capabilities? -Reply

[Roy Tennant]

In the interest of full disclosure, I have a book coming out next week 
for which the entire purpose is to teach librarians (and others) HTML. 
Now on to what I want to say.

Librarians need to know whatever they need to perform their jobs 
effectively. This means that in any one library there may be one, two, 
one hundred, or none who need to know HTML. Hopefully you know who you 
are. If it is you, then it is your *professional duty* to learn that new 
tool. And anyone who (seriously) complains about it simply hasn't been 
paying attention to where the profession has been going for the last 
decade or more (that is, constant and rapid technological change).

<SOAPBOX>

If you have a pulse, things change. If you want to remain professionally 
viable you must learn. Not every once in a while, not just when 
administration sends you to a class, but *all the time*. If you do 
anything less you will be increasingly marginalized. If you wake up one 
morning without a job or even the prospect of one then you will have no 
one to blame but yourself.

</SOAPBOX>

So what about HTML specifically? Some of you need to know a dozen tags 
tops. Some of you need to know it thoroughly. Some need to be able to 
make minor changes to existing CGI scripts. Some of you need to be able 
to write CGI programs from scratch. ALL of us need to know what HTML is, 
how to see it beneath the Web documents we use (view source), and what's 
involved (in general terms) with using it to present information.

Roy Tennant