"When selecting a profession, I decided that I didn't have the correct range of skills for a catering manager. I pay full respect to those who have chosen such a tough and challenging profession, but it wasn't my career choice." Thank you Colin, absolutely! I could extrapolate from that and say that I didn't do media studies in order to be professionally qualified to provide a son et lumiere experience which includes pa system and strobe lighting for our "readers". That surely is the next logical step isn't it? If we submit to societal changes whereby every new multimedia gadget and the requirement for maybe a fast food burger bar within the library becomes the norm, then the library (as I know it) is dead. I realise society does change and this is an inevitable fact of life but do we have to therefore redefine our core values? With downloading books, newspapers and journals onto Kindles and iPads why do we even need libraries? The core function of a library - any library - is surely to provide a learning environment, not just studying, but thinking too.
This thread really isn't about the use of mobiles in libraries. It's about libraries and librarians and their respective futures. If I can digress slightly, I have now officially redesignated our "Information Centre" as a Library. Yes we did (and still do) multimedia but I wanted to retain the very essence of the library by restoring its ancient title. Library has a very specific meaning despite the word being partially appropriated by our IT foes (they have now commandeered the term Information for themselves). This is not about being a luddite or being technophobic (which we certainly are not), it's just about drawing a line in the sand over which we will not cross. Otherwise, yes, we might as well re-skill now and get our catering and music and dance licenses sorted out. CILIP whilst flapping about like a rabbit caught in the headlights might do well to consider and reconsider the "L" word in its title.
[sorry this is a corrected version of my original sent a few minutes ago, having bad day at work]
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