> Are you suggesting that all of us reading this should just quit our jobs and go work somewhere other than a library now, and libraries should disolve themselves?
>
> And that's useful for us to discuss here why?
Well, so that people on this groups *get* the other jobs, right? In
all seriousness, I don't see why the death of libraries and
librarianship should be dismissed as a topic.
Does anyone have lists of reference questions?
Presumably there's a body of articles out there breaking them down by
type and so forth, by public and academic, etc. It would be
interesting to see such a list prior to Google, and today. I too doubt
that "almanac-y" questions are very prominent today. If they were
prominent in the past, I'm betting that Google answers them now. It's
not just that "how tall is the Eiffel Tower?" actually gives you the
answer "Eiffel Tower — Height: 1986 feet/300 Meters" but, if it
didn't, the first ten results also include it.
In sum, the web has obsoleted *some* of the uses of the library
already. Once upon a time people did need the library—or a decent
personal library—to answer trivial factual questions. That time is
gone. But I'm not convinced Wolfram Alpha, or any similar technology,
will shrink the library's domain much further.
Tim
Received on Mon May 04 2009 - 10:46:37 EDT