Saving libraries but not librarians

This was an article in the Los Angeles Times written by a disillusioned 
librarian who maintains that librarians get little respect, especially 
today ("California must value librarians; libraries can't run 
themselves" 
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-powers-librarians-20111026,0,3265383.story). 
She provides numbers showing how budgets and librarians have decreased 
in the last few years. The most perceptive point she makes is:

"Still, the idea of shutting down a library is unpalatable to most 
officials. So they lay off librarians to keep the buildings open, 
supporting the illusion that libraries can simply run themselves.

On school visits, I ask what students think a librarian does. The 
response is always the same. "Librarians check out books. They read a 
lot. They tell people to be quiet." These misconceptions are held by 
adults too. When I told a friend that I was embarking on my graduate 
degree, he asked, "You need a master's degree in the Dewey Decimal System?"

With that attitude, who cares whether California has any librarians 
left? Why not replace us with phone trees, self-service checkout 
machines and volunteers?"

Then another article in reply was published by a fellow at a legal 
clinic ("Saving libraries but not librarians" 
http://opinion.latimes.com/opinionla/2011/11/saving-libraries-but-not-librarians-blowback.html), 
who claims that academic libraries perhaps need traditional libraries 
and librarians, but that the general public can get by with Google. His 
opening sums up his argument:
"The digital revolution, while improving society, has gutted many 
professions. Machines have replaced assembly-line workers, ATMs have 
replaced bank tellers, Amazon has replaced bookstores and IBM's Watson 
may even replace doctors and lawyers. And now, the Internet is replacing 
librarians.

Or at least it should be.

The digital revolution has made many librarians obsolete. Historically, 
librarians exclusively provided many services: They organized 
information, guided others' research and advised community members. But 
now, librarians compete with the Internet and Google. Unlike libraries, 
the Internet's information is not bound by walls; from blogs and books 
to journals and laws, the Internet has them all. And Google makes this 
information easily accessible to anyone with an Internet connection."

My own take on this issue is what others pointed out in the comments to 
the second article: the second person does not know what a librarian 
does, and the librarian in the first article pointed out that very few 
people do know. Even people who use libraries all the time and claim to 
love them so much, still do not understand what library work is. But the 
simple fact is that the materials on the web has caused a true 
revolution in information that librarians are still trying to deal with. 
Libraries normally enact changes on a schedule akin to geological time, 
but the web materials change constantly. Google changes its search 
algorithm about once a day!

The traditional method that libraries have used to deal with new 
materials has been to fold them in with the same procedures they had 
used for the old materials, so e.g. when photography came in, libraries 
altered their current methods to include them; the same with computer 
files and other newer materials. But our old methods have failed when 
applying them to materials on the web (primarily not because online 
materials are harder to catalog--there are just a lot more of them and 
they change unpredictably without notice, so the record becomes outdated 
as a consequence).

If the Google-Publisher agreement had been approved, I think we would be 
taking the issue of the relevance of the library more seriously, but it 
was rejected and libraries have gained a breathing space of a few years. 
Still, all of those materials will definitely be available online sooner 
or later, and libraries will simply have to deal with the situation of 
90% of the resources people want are available online at the click of a 
button. Someone wrote to me privately about the Amazon Prime program 
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_primeland_kindlelendinglibrary?nodeId=200757120 
where people can borrow one book a month for $80 a year--plus you can 
watch movies and get other advantages. Depending on the books and movies 
you can get, this may be a very popular choice for a lot of people. For 
those who would choose Amazon Prime, I would bet that many would feel 
they did not need libraries any longer. And in tough economic times, 
they may be less agreeable to taxes paying for libraries that they don't 
use.

These issues could perhaps be resolved if the public had a better 
understanding and appreciation of what librarians do, and what new 
things they could do with updated tools and in a new information 
environment. But librarians themselves will have to change first.

-- 
James Weinheimer  weinheimer.jim.l_at_gmail.com
First Thus: http://catalogingmatters.blogspot.com/
Cooperative Cataloging Rules: http://sites.google.com/site/opencatalogingrules/