I checked the feeds again today, and the Google craze was talked about in two of them. Librarian.net had a link to a NY Times (online) article dated October 22nd entitled "Librarians Shun Deals to Place Book on Web," which I had actually already read today. Google and Microsoft are presenting libraries with offers to have their books scanned in for free. However, they have some restrictions, which many librarians won't agree to. One of these is that the material will be unavailable to other commercial search services.
Another company, the Open Content Alliance, is a nonprofit effort that is striving to make materials widely available. They, in contrast, are charging as much as thirty dollars to scan each book. The Shifted Librarian highlighted a book about emerging technologies and the future of academic libraries. These stories can't help but remind me that the identities of libraries and librarians are changing. With so much of a library's resources being digitized nowadays, and with online databases and catalogs, people seem to rely less on the library as a physical building.
Librarians are having to keep up with their own education, so as to stay well-informed about new technology, and also in order to instruct patrons and even other faculty members. Though people may do more and more research outside of the library building itself, they still rely on librarians to help them, as per phone and instant messaging assistance.
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