One unnamed scientist, quoted in the May-June Harvard Magazine, suggested that the collections of Widener Library-the accumulated holdings of more than three centuries-should be dumped in the Charles River, leading Jonathan Shaw to ask, “What future for libraries?” And, one might ask, “What future for the librarians?”Ī balanced answer is provided by Robert Darnton, director of Harvard’s University Library and a professor he is the author or editor of more than 20 volumes on the history of books, particularly in the context of the French Enlightenment, and has been a notable supporter of Harvard’s relationship with Google Books. When a major university such as Harvard loses a substantial portion of its endowment, the $165-million budget and 1,200 employees of its 73 libraries begin to seem like low-hanging fruit. Try depending on a fellow professor to respond to an urgent e-mail message within a week, and you’ll begin to understand my appreciation for librarians as colleagues.Īs highly professional guides who can lead us through an increasingly tangled bank of information, librarians provide a voice of caution in a period when drastic, irreversible change seems like an easy fix for a concatenation of expensive institutional ailments. If I send them a student with a problem, not only is it solved, but the student returns with information about resources that I didn’t even know existed. And, earlier today, when I casually mentioned that I was writing this essay, one of our librarians provided me a link to hundreds of relevant resources within minutes. Recently, one of our college’s reference librarians drove a student of mine around town on a tour of historic sites to help her with a project that combines archival research with new media. They may still shush you in some places, but librarians will also go to the most extraordinary lengths to help you achieve your scholarly goals without asking for any of the credit. If you are a stranger on a strange campus, the one person who will always save you is a librarian. They have the intellectual curiosity of academics without the aloofness and attitude often displayed by professors. In my experience, librarians almost always pass the beer test: They are among the most likeable people you’ll find at any college. From that permanent dialectical struggle, they appear to acquire a mixture of whimsy and wisdom-in addition to a notable taste for eccentric eyewear. They see the potential of new tools, but they are also the guardians of tradition. They understand the chain of events between the butterfly and the hurricane, so to speak, because they have experience with the cultivation of knowledge and with the practical consequences of institutional overreaching. Marilyn Johnson’s This Book Is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All (HarperCollins, 2010) provides an entertaining, picaresque narrative of her experiences with librarians who, these days, are “wrestling a raucous, multiheaded, madly multiplying beast of exploding information.” Ostensibly a gathering of amusing anecdotes about library culture-including the famous performances of precision book-cart drill teams at the convention of the American Library Association-Johnson’s book is a stirring defense of the library and librarians, whom she presents as activists defending democracy and the First Amendment, as well as visionaries opening the door to the digital future, while protecting our printed legacy.Īs Johnson presents them, librarians may seem aggressively avant-garde, but they are rarely techno-utopians. No less important, they are often the most informed people when it comes to technological change-its limits as well as its advantages. They know what’s going on across the disciplines, among professors and administrators as well as students. It’s that, more than any other class of professionals in higher education, librarians possess a comprehensive understanding of the scholarly ecosystem. It’s not that many of today’s librarians routinely dress in sunglasses and black leather (though some do). Evelyn, from my elementary school in the early 70s.) It’s a dated reference, but today’s information professionals often remind me more of Ian Malcolm, the “chaos theorist” played by Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park (1993), than of the eyeglass-chain-wearing librarians of yore, if they ever existed in significant numbers. For all the concern expressed about the imminent demise of the college library, there may never have been a time when librarians seemed more vital, forward-thinking-even edgy-than they do now.
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