[WEB4LIB] Re: Webmasters s/b librarians

[Sheryl Dwinell]

. 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.'


Yeesh. I figured it was obvious that systems professionals could learn
library stuff. I was focusing on the librarian & what librarians do, not
writing a thesis on the merits of one profession learning the skills of
another. I was responding to a specific point someone made about would we
expect librarians to do all these other things when the administration could
go out and hire an accountant, graphic artist, etc. etc. My point was that
librarians do take on these roles & do a fine job. Most libraries typically
don't have the budgets to hire people to do specific jobs & rely on
librarians to do things that might not be entirely library related. So, they
do the job & they do it well. I don't think libraries should be knocked for
using librarians to run their websites whether it's because of budgetary or
personnel constraints or because librarians WANT to do the job themselves.

Sheryl Dwinell
Webmaster/Database Management Librarian
Marquette University Libraries
Milwaukee, WI
414-288-3406
dwinells at vms.csd.mu.edu