Death of a Librarian
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“The library is a […] organism.”
— Siyali Ramamrita Ranganathan
Although it seems like only yesterday when a former college roommate of mine asked a then directionless me, “have you thought about library school?” this year will mark my twentieth year of working in libraries. Except for my internship and first job out of library school, all of that time has been spent at one institution.
The job has certainly changed over the years. I started off doing mainly reference and instruction, dabbling in electronic resources management, and later took up more web duties, while nowadays most of my time is occupied by tasks related to our discovery layer. I’ve also seen more than one colleague retire and not need to be replaced because their job was no longer necessary. What does that say about our field in general?
There’s a perennial news headline, usually accompanied by some hackneyed phrases such as “librarians turn a page” and “close the book on the past,” about how libraries are a-changing. There’s likewise been a lot of hand wringing in the profession’s discourse about how we must adapt in order to maintain relevance in today’s digital and unmediated information landscape — while also retaining the values which make libraries worth having.
Although it’s slowly becoming acceptable to acknowledge that our traditional practices and service models must either evolve or die off, there’s still a hidden assumption that the need for libraries, in some form or another, will never peak or wane. I would liken the presumption behind statements beginning with, “If libraries are to survive…” to someone, while facing the advent of the telegraph in the 1860s, who assuredly stated, “If the Pony Express is to survive…”
At my age, one starts to accept that we won’t be around forever. The universe got along fairly well for fourteen billion years or so without me, and I’d like to think I’m doing my part, or at least trying my darnedest, to ensure it continues a healthy existence for at least as long once I’m gone. It’s both unsettling and reassuring to think that these very words I now write, not to mention my entire professional corpus as a whole, could even be read by someone after I’m no longer living.
If you’re familiar with my work, you know that a central theme is how we can’t just keep on preserving the status quo for no good reason, especially when technology is giving us so many new opportunities to improve people’s lives. Someday, libraries as we now recognize them might not be around anymore, and that may well be a good thing. What we do today, by either turning a blind eye to progress or refusing to stubbornly cling to the past, will be our only lasting product for future generations.
We have far too short a time not to fully explore the possibilities for a better tomorrow. Innovations are inevitable. That’s why always sticking with tried and true methods is woefully short-sighted and inherently problematic. There should be something more beneficial left for those after us from our passing other than their older colleagues no longer being around to impede new ideas. When my time comes, hopefully I will have made it as easy as possible for my successors to continue on. In the words of Mae West, “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
