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The real role of librarians?

I've been speaking at a number of library-related conferences, including the current (and huge) Online Information conference in London. Now, I'm not a librarian, but I don't have to be to spot some of the issues that come up again and again.

Across all of these conferences is the common (and often unstated) theme that librarians are "under threat", and that they may be a "thing of the past". The strange thing is that I don't think it needs to be this way...

Librarians have become associated with books (and these are certainly being eliminated in most organisations), or with taxonomies and cataloguing (which no-one really understands). I find this a strangely narrow definition for librarians (and libraries).

Certainly there is a greater need for librarians than ever before. Every statistic shows that the amount of information is growing at a disturbing rate, and the problem of the age is finding and managing the information that we need.

This is where librarians should be playing a role, by going back to their original definition, that of the information professional who helps people find what they need. While there isn't a front desk at the library to walk up to, librarians can still greatly assist organisations by:

• pre-filtering information
• conducting research on behalf of others
• communicating key information
• assisting and educating in search

What this isn't about is just owning a list of powerful but incredibly difficult to use information sources. Instead, it's about getting out into the organisation to find ways that they can add direct value, often for key groups of specialist users.

All of this was brought to a head by a presentation last night at the Knowledge Cafe by Dave Pollard, who talked about the principle of re-intermediation. Terrible word, but the concept (of putting back in the middleman) is a great one in reference to these issues.

Anyway, apologies for my presumption in preaching to a discipline that I'm not even a member of...

Posted by jamesr on December 01, 2006 01:06 AM
Categories: Knowledge management