[WEB4LIB] Re: Webmasters s/b librarians

[Edward Wigg]

At 03:58 PM 9/16/98 -0700, Sheryl.Dwinell at marquette.edu wrote:
>....
>There may be large libraries with sufficient budgets to hire Web designers,
>interface design specialists, systems analysts, and programmers, but I doubt
>that is the reality in most libraries.  A lot of librarians have taken on
>some of those tasks and do a pretty damn good job of it.  As for librarians
>being trained in graphic design, accounting and PR, I suspect you can find
>lots who have, by default, taken on those roles. Public librarians come to
>mind because they are asked to do a lot of PR work, but seldom have a budget
>that would allow them to hire a PR expert. Are these librarians expert at
>all those additional responsibilities they're asked to take on? No, but
>their skills are sufficient to achieve the result desired by the library.
>....

Most of us take on tasks beyond our areas of formal competence at one time
or another (every time I take a plunger to a blocked sink I'm doing that),
and we often do an acceptable, even sometimes excellent, job. But it is
intellectual arrogance of the worst sort to claim that librarians have
"skills are sufficient to achieve the result" in other fields and not admit
that the same is true for many systems professionals but 'librarian amateurs.'

Let us celebrate our strengths, but not at the expense of the talents of
others, even if they do happen to be good at some of the things we pride
ourselves on. The alternative sounds a bit too much like a call for
'licensed librarians' for my taste, a monopolistic tactic most professions
are better off without.

Edward