Libraries are helpful. Libraries are necessary. Quality of information is more important than quantity. (It's a long quotation, so there's your basic take-home message.)
Although technology reveals exciting opportunities, it doesn't replace human interaction. Yes, the Internet has fundamentally changed reference librarians' work; it hasn't supplanted their value. Today if a consumer needs to translate a sentence from an unfamiliar language to English, he will use Babelfish or another freely available translation website, rather than locate a library's bilingual dictionaries. Further, why should a consumer visit the library to use a directory when phone numbers and addresses for organizations are freely available online? If a consumer needs to know the amount of soybeans produced by Ohio farmers during the last year, he'll seek this fact himself, as statistics which were once only found in libraries' print government documents collections are now almost exclusively online. As long as the consumer can verify the authenticity and quality of the information located, the Internet is a remarkable tool for straightforward, time-sensitive, factually-driven information.
But librarians understand the Internet can also seductively entice a consumer to remain trapped in a void of miscellaneous blurbs, some correct, some incorrect. With everyone as a potential author, consumers must learn to utilize the information found online with caution, and resist the temptation to rely on immediate, instantly gratifying text which can be purposefully misleading or grossly out of context. Many consumers haven't acquired this skill, getting frustrated, terrified, and confused when their serendipitous online wandering fails to satisfy their needs. They realize the Internet is a huge amoeba and find their way back to libraries, seeking the in-depth information that library collections provide. This is particularly true when consumers need to learn a new skill or understand a complex issue. The in-depth collections libraries construct are a strength, along with libraries' ability to organize information.
Learning is a social activity and libraries, museums, zoological gardens, and parks all work to inform their constituencies and stimulate personal reflection. Libraries provide an environment where consumers can slow down, locate information either in a physical or digital form, and assimilate it with their own ideas and values. Libraries contribute to a community's social capital, generating wealth and value by supporting consumers' need for personal and professional growth, providing referral to a community's agencies and organizations, empowering consumers to make informed decisions, supporting cultural awareness and diversity, and making spaces available for individuals to meet.
Google cannot and will not replace library services. Yes, consumers can obtain factual information on their own, without library mediation. The sheer amount of information retrieved via Internet searches, however, often intimidates, rather than empowers the consumer. The reference librarian who both functions as and promotes herself as a library and information consultant is better positioned to communicate her skills as an experienced expert who can seamlessly navigate both the Internet and the library, saving the consumer time and energy by matching him with the desired information regardless of format. Funding instead enables libraries to sustain the innovative services and programs, collections, and facilities that consumers value. In such an environment, libraries must become more consumer-focused, defining customer needs in customer terms to develop and customize services and market new and existing products. An additional challenge is overcoming our preference for forcing customers to seek our assistance only after exhausting Internet search options.
Murphy, Sarah Ann. The Librarian as Information Consultant: Transforming reference for the information age. Chicago: ALA, 2011.
