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At an inaugural lecture last night, while the speaker was enthusiasing about Web 2.0 someone asked the question, or made the point, that searching isn't the point of the exercise, finding is, and showed the National Record Office as a case.

 

By accident, unless a tinzle fairy organises these things, I had the catalogue for Internet Librarian International land on my table the same day.

 

This seems to me to be full of Web 2.0 stuff with just about nothing obvious on the traditional skills and professional competences which made libraries libraries.

 

Is the plot being lost?

 

In Librarians for Social Change I argued we had to improve the political, historical, philosophical, cultural, aspect of our competences, not throw them out entirely.

 

With the computer industry forcing grep and search upon us, with social tagging and social networking, it seems now that re-asserting the essential competences is more important than ever, but the profession is remarkably silent, like it has given up, yet the ILI is badged with CILIP.

 

Perhaps we need to reform the library association?

 

Incidently, sorry for the 20= etc which appear in messages in digest mode, I know it makes text almost unreadable, but is beyond my control and imposed I think by the digesting software?


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