No worries, really. I realize I sounded a bit more “stiff” than I meant to. No offense taken. I understand you didn’t men it literally. Thank you for for the vote of confidence!
1 Like
His claim that researchers didn’t need a whole book struck me as a bizarre thing for a professional librarian (and director of a major university library) to say but it quickly became apparent that his talk was about the Internet as the ultimate way to cut costs and eliminate the need for libraries.
That much at least has gone the opposite way: library spending goes up every year and I’d say there’s a greater need now for libraries and librarians.
1 Like
The plague didn’t make doctors obsolete; it made them fucking badass:
Certainly nothing matched the ‘plague doctor’ look’s freakiness until 20th century NCB gear; and even much of that was too cost-optimized to really explore the aesthetic potential of terrifying-gas-mask-mook.
On the minus side, though, what the plague didn’t do was actually have a cure that doctors knew anything about until quite a bit later. Supportive care probably beat dying alone; and improved the prospects of less severe cases; but the only thing keeping doctors of the time from being ‘obsolete’ in the face of the plague is that they had never actually been terribly close to the cutting edge of effectiveness.
2 Likes
That much at least has gone the opposite way: library spending goes up
every year and I’d say there’s a greater need now for libraries and
librarians.
I’d be careful about equating cost with utility.
You think there’s a greater need now for libraries and I’m not sure I agree. When I see libraries doing things like installing 3d printers it makes me think that they are struggling to stay relevant. I’d say the value of the core mission is in decline and that’s driving libraries to find new ways to serve their communities.
Where I live, the public library costs each household around $130 per year. I’m not sure how much that number could climb before people start trying to take away library funding or turn it into a fee-based service to make those who use the library, pay for it.
1 Like
I should have been much clearer. I didn’t intend to conflate cost with utility, but I see why it sounds that way. I was thinking about costs for online resources rising in academic libraries, which is contrary to early predictions, and driven by publishers who either raise subscription prices 10-20% every year or offer complex multi-title, multi-year packages with a “generous” 2-5% inflation cap.
And it’s still up to librarians to organize all that and make it available in ways that are useful to patrons.
In short the idea that libraries could save money by putting everything online hasn’t panned out.
I don’t know about public libraries but I do see their core mission changing somewhat as they provide Internet access to people who can’t afford a computer. Investing in a 3D printer, though, does seem pretty extreme.
2 Likes
Bad metaphor. The internet making librarians obsolete is more like free, unlimited doctors make current doctors obsolete.
1 Like
I will help you locate the information you need, and also help you assess whether it is ‘good’ (i.e., is it just a compilation of stuff people have said, or is it a vetted, scholarly source? Both have their uses.) I can suggest things to read or resources; if you are looking for authors who write like Sandra Brown, Deepak Chopra, or Tony Hillerman I have recommendations. Want to know how to fix your 1998 Ford Taurus water pump? We have Chilton’s manuals both hard copy and online. Need a copy of the county code? We have it. Want to sign up for absentee voting? Need tax forms? Apply for a passport? Set up an e-mail account? We can help you with all of that.
6 Likes
I think the metaphor is bad but yours is as bad as the original.
-
“teh intertubes” != “teh google”. The original metaphor was about searching, and really should have started with “Saying that Google makes…”. The internet is a repository, while librarians are a search interface. That’s the main source of confusion in the whole thread, tbh.
-
Your “free unlimited doctors” are not doctors, but rather medicine books. It should have read “Saying the internet makes librarians obsolete is like saying free unlimited books about medicine make doctors obsolete”.
So uhm, bad metaphors all around, really.
If really we want to bring the plague into this, we could say “Saying the internet makes librarians obsolete is like saying the plague makes assassins obsolete” – yeah, people might die on their own, but it might not be the people you wanted to kill, it could take much longer, and the whole thing will get pretty messy.
(This said, the problem is not librarians – they are rebranding and will be fine. The problem is actual libraries: they now have to renegotiate their role in public budgets, one by one, and lots of them are being lost in the process.)
The internet overall is not actually delivering on most of those “cutting costs” promises, as most honest “web people” will readily admit. Amazon is the exception, not the rule.
1 Like
Or like saying cookbooks make chefs obsolete.
2 Likes
I think we can all agree, that Corey’s post begs the question of why, and this is atypical of Corey. He likes to explain his statements, and this time he didn’t.
I wish my library had a 3d printer. I could fix the goddamn food processor then. I need pesto, dammit!
2 Likes
WHAT IF I JUST WANT TO SHOUT VERY LOUD?!
2 Likes
Do you have a mortar and pestle?
2 Likes
Yeah, but that’s, like, work y’know?
2 Likes
As a person with a library degree I have to admit to some prejudice on this subject, but I agree that the Internet has made having good information people even more important. There may not be quite so many in the traditional roles that people think of when they hear librarian, but there is a growing need for experts in this area. For example, I work as a patent and competitive intelligence researcher / analyst for a consumer goods company. The information professional’s job is getting harder. One is that there is so much information. How do you find exactly what you need? How do you organize it for your clients (company, public)? Second, the need to be able to qualitatively evaluate the information you have and communicate your findings is even more important as the floodgates keep opening up wider and wider. Finally, most of the questions I get now are the tough ones. The easy information needs can be handled very nicely by people on their own, but when they can’t find what they need they end up coming to information professionals.
2 Likes
I really want a pithy bumper sticker slogan like this to fling at an acquaintance with whom I was arguing about internet vs libraries, but this one needs a little polishing before I’d fling it.
Then we’ll probably ask you to go outside. Or ask what happened (you could have been stung by a bee, y’know).
1 Like
I dunno, the librarians also maintain the file system and uh… no we shouldn’t because further examination will only make the bad no bake petit fours less nourishing, or whatever.
This. This is very interesting. I hadn’t thought of this angle. Thank you!
