I for one don’t understand the relatively kind reception given by biblioblogoland to Paul Gandel’s recent article in the latest EDUCAUSE review.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m as happy as the next guy or gal to see the fate of libraries seriously discussed, and the article did touch off a series of lively discussions on Web4Lib, but there is a lot here that troubles me. Please don’t misunderstand me — I know full well that the card catalog has bit the dust, print is becoming less relevant (in some fields, much less relevant) and our “shusssshing” days are over. However, if you’re going to talk about the challenges facing the Library, how about mentioning some of the ways that librarians are already attempting to meet them head on?

For most libraries, subscribing to electronic publications is becoming an exercise in negotiation and purchasing rather than a process of making choices about collections. This service is quickly becoming so commoditized that the role of the library is simply becoming that of a purchasing agent acting on behalf of its community

Okay, for one thing, the perils of the “Big Deal” have been discussed in the community for some time, and we’ve already seen a good bit of push-back, particularly from larger institutions. It’s irritating that this isn’t acknowledged. For another thing, the library has always been a “a purchasing agent acting on behalf of its community”. Do you think those monks could afford their own scrolls? That’s what the scriptorium was for…

As more of that heritage becomes digitalized and deposited in the hands of “private” owners, doesn’t this beg the question of how to ensure that the information continues to exist even if the information provider goes out of business?

Well sure it does — good thing that libraries are already working with projects like LOCKSS to try to answer these questions.

Shouldn’t librarians play a key role in evaluating and determining the quality of these new information hubs? Won’t librarians still be needed to help people navigate through these sites and separate the wheat from the chaff? […] The Amazon.com model, which uses peer reviews by individuals and panels of experts, might supersede librarians in providing this quality-control function. This seems especially likely when one considers how easy it is for Web sites to provide such reviews and/or endorsements and how much of a competitive incentive these sites have for doing so.

So why exactly do we have to choose between offering our own advice and facilitating the advice of others? Why is it an “either/or” situation? Did not reference librarians of yore send patrons to review articles and bibliographies? The WorldCat Wiki certainly represents one possible way forward, and there has been a lot of discussion of the importance of “social software” in libraries as of late.

It is not hard to imagine a scenario in which colleges and universities will shift their resources to pay for a national information service customized to the needs of the individual institution rather than support their own local library reference service.

But if such a service really was locally customized, isn’t that going to start costing real money? What would be the advantage to an institution? Don’t forget that the “Electric Library®” got bought by ProQuest after failing to put the College Library out of business, while an enfeebled netLibrary was scooped up by OCLC.

In response to the Web, many libraries, individually and/or collectively, have started to create their own information hubs—digital repositories—using the intellectual content of their institutions. Unfortunately, many of these repositories are built on traditional methods of information organization rather than on the new information-dissemination models evolving on the Web. Potential contributors to and users of these repositories are finding the organization and metadata tag systems imposed by libraries far too cumbersome.

Wha? There are just so many things wrong here… Digital Repositories have a lot more to do with preserving “born digital” materials and enabling Open Access than they do with “responding” to the web. Not to mention that it’s a good thing that infomation professionals are providing a structured access alternative to keyword searching and tag-soup — and for that matter, can anybody point to any well-functioning repository that puts the total burden of metadata creation on the backs of content providers?

Yes, libraries have adapted and have incorporated new technologies and media in the past while also managing to remain, to a large extent, loyal to centuries-old practices and approaches. This may no longer be possible in an information world dominated by the Web.

Well, I seriously doubt that there’s much that links my everyday work-experiences with Panizzi’s. However, the values and purpose remain, and will continue to do so.

Blake Carver over at LISNews asks “Do people think the web is replacing libraries? Whether or not they’re right, it’s a self fulfilling prophecy if enough of them think it.” And I think that’s exactly right. It’s the very attitudes reflected in Gandel’s article that are enabling our possible irrelevance. It is our job to respond to nonsense like this and reassert our professional worth.