September 25, 2006 (2): Libraries without Librarians?

One of the contributors to the latest discussion about search on Confused of Calcutta was astute enough to recognize the value of librarians. What made the contribution so valuable was the recognition that librarians are not “repositories of information” (at least not primarily). A librarian is primarily a “point of contact,” based on the premise that a visit to a library is a social engagement. Take away the social engagement and you take away any opportunity to get at the motives on which a search is founded. Take away an understanding of motive; and it no longer matters whether or not you get an answer to, “Did you find what you were looking for?” (which, of course, is seldom a yes/no answer). In other words any conversation about "customer satisfaction" can never be anything other than vacuous.

Now I still remember that librarians were almost entirely absent from the first digital libraries conference I attended over ten years ago. It became quickly apparent to the few brave enough to attend that the discourse of the conference was not going to address any of their concerns. I do not think things have improved very much (if at all). As far as I can tell, the compensation librarians receive for their efforts is on a decline (at least relative to the general economy); and the techno-centric ideal is still trying to purge them from “the loop.” In this setting it hardly makes sense to ask if our academies are doing a good job of educating the librarians of the future. To paraphrase the ultimate bad-taste commencement joke (delivered at Stanford about five years ago), the only question graduates of such a program will need to answer is, “Do you want fries with that?”

Perhaps one of the reasons I continue to be skeptical about social software is that it continues to push away critical issues of person-to-person engagement in favor of solving the “technical problem du jour.” At the end of the day, there is not that much difference between an effective person-to-person engagement with a librarian and one with a car dealer; and, in both cases, technology seems to be doing a great job of impeding how these people know how to get the job done. Today’s San Francisco Chronicle ran a story about the latest study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, which included a sub-headline to the effect that “we may become pets of robots.” Well, if Web 2.0 creates a world in which we can no longer deal in effective person-to-person engagements, that may be all we shall be good for!