Google Nation
Librarians are powerful people. We have skills that no other profession can boast. I’m sure we’ve all had that cringing, face-scrunching, apologetic look when we tell a new person we’re librarians, “Oh, I’m sorry… you’re going to be out of work soon, right?” Or, my favorite: “They still have librarians? That’s refreshing.” We are not going away if we can apply our skills a bit differently; change our mindset slightly.
Today I was inspired to say, clearly, once and for all, how I see our profession changing. The simple fact is that we are not going to be able to train people to search more like librarians. They are going to use Google and other systems that act like it. Who can blame them really? Our searching skills are finely honed, cultivated assets of our profession – instead of imposing them on novice searchers, why not apply them to improve our library systems? Library catalogs were never meant to be searched by users, they were designed to be searched by trained professionals (that’s us) on a user’s behalf. In the world of DIY, we might better serve our users by applying our skills to changing our technolgies to meet their expectations rather than endeavor to change their expectations to meet our systems.
