The popular conception of a Librarian is as rooted in the public’s consciousness as any other tried and true profession. Doctor, Lawyer, Teacher, Police Officer. Librarian. But, what happens when an entire well-regarded line of work undergoes a fundamental transformation? It’s hard to say, and the devil is in the details, but I get the impression that for anyone who works with electronic media today the devil is the details.

As journalists, librarians, researchers, and others take on added roles as information disseminators the lines continue to blur between previously separated professions.

Librarians traditionally have held two responsibilities: maintaining libraries (duh!) and helping patrons conduct research. Journalists, on the other hand, have been responsible for informing the public of noteworthy events (sometimes). Researchers have always researched. Given a preponderance of free, easily accessible electronic information, though, professionals in different fields are starting to find themselves pulling switch duty. A few cases in point:

• Google is digitizing library books and calling it “web content.”
• Journalists for the New York Times routinely add interactive web applications to their articles.
• Librarians are creating totally unique information resources instead of just finding them.

Put succinctly, the United States  is no longer an industrial nation but a knowledge based one.

Ok. So, with job responsibilities bluring together – and new media in a state of flux – it’s hard to tell the extent to which this is happening. The future is always clouded, and it’s impossible to say what this means for future Librarians, but it’s still possible to define  a set of job requirements that can be expected to remain in place foreseeable future.

What would this “new model librarian” look like?

Yesterday I took a quick trip to Ellis Library to read up on competitive intelligence.  Maybe it’s just me, but the majority of what I found was managerial business stuff that an MBA student would read. Don’t get me wrong. Business and administration books have their value, even though I’m not interested in them, but it seems odd to me that everything I found focused on supply chains and the like.

Does anyone know of something that I should be reading?

Every time I get anxious, a Kirkregaard quote pops into my head.

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”

If that’s the case then I’ve been too free at work lately. To be sure solo-librarians always operate independently, but I’m quickly finding that without a group to coordinate my activities with it’s hard to “hone in” on key priorities. Sure, I know what my patrons need and what I’m doing. I can explain everything I’m working on in detail too. The catch is – it seems – solo librarianship requires the librarian to sit down from time to time and the establishment of goals. More rigid goals than usual. Without something to hold on there’s nothing, and I’m wondering if anyone else has had this experience?

I expect so, but as a solo I’m detatched from external opinions. Interesting.

Roy Tennant, the Senior Program Manager for OCLC Programs and Research, wrote an article that as someone interested in digital libraries, and as someone who appreciates the Neitzsche derived reference, just… plain… owns! Yes, that’s right. I referred to an article from the Library Journal as “owning.”

Spurred on by a book titled “Print is Dead,” Tennant makes the point that print dosen’t seem to be going anywhere. Instead he notes that we are moving to a mixed media environment. I’ve has suspicions as much for a while, but the fact that Jeff Gomez’s book was printed in PRINT seems to make the title either one of two things: 1. suspect (or) 2. an obvious attention grabber.

The full post can be found at here.