"Early Visions of Future Librarianship" by Gregg Sapp

One issue that this article brought to mind was that it seems as though librarians are a very worrying bunch. Librarians’ concerns are so well documented that they can be divided into periods and section headings! Just the fact that a book was written specifically about libraries and the ideas about the future written by librarians says a lot about the profession. Whereas some professions have been able to simply deal with the problems in front of them and leave worrying about professional change to others, it seems to me that at least some of the librarians were looking towards a time when their place in history or profession would be respected and held on a pedestal, which is rather telling of how librarians both viewed themselves and how they were viewed by others. The tone of the excerpts that the author included in her introduction were remarkably passive. This vision of the future was not something that librarians should harness and actively change. In general I got the impression that they expected that certain changes would happen to them, not by them. The author articulated that as well; during the period from 1946-77, in general most librarians did not think that a revolution in technology was at hand, merely minimal improvements in existing technology were occurring. Therefore, they would not have to consider that they were a part of a very large shift in society towards something completely new, and wouldn’t have to consider what kind of an active role they should play in it. So there is a problem of librarians wanting to be revered in the future but not wanting to take an active role in changing the actual face of the future.

This sort of conservative view seems oddly out of step with the enthusiasm that was apparent in the late 1800s in the profession. Melville Dewey’s school for librarianship was a large example of this excitement, but it should be remembered he was a singularly active figure in the library profession, and perhaps librarians have always tended to be less excited about change and more unrealistic about public appreciation. Even when the passive librarians were confronted with investing in the new kinds of technology to make the libraries more efficient and space-saving, there were some who balked that it would be a misstep. Though the example was almost comical in its rejection of technology, one has to take that problem of embracing technology seriously today. Has Google made librarians obsolete? Have user-friendly interfaces made the librarian useless to the average reader or researcher? I sometimes fear that may be the case, but perhaps that is less to do with my rational assessment of the situation and more the fear that personal interaction is being sacrificed for the god of technology. In the end, I think librarian and patron relationships will continue to change, but always exist. I think I’ll look to the future on this one with fingers crossed.