Librarians are rarely seen as custodians of knowledge, and their job has been downgraded to mere cataloguing. More troublingly, while the the physicality of a card catalog, and typewritten documents before that, imposed limits and therefore selectivity on what degree of information the government could store about a book (and by extension about you), that limit no longer exists so the amount of information stored has exploded while the amount of service provided has remained the same or even diminished, to the general detriment of society.
That erstwhile necessity to consult or at least cooperate with librarians also fostered a degree of politeness in social relations.
...According to TNT.~
Real librarians have become somewhat less prestigious as their previous roles have been automated. They are now little more than administrators of the information service provider of last resort for poor people.
One of the reasons we still need librarians is that they understand that "information service provider of last resort for poor people" is a vital and noble service.
I'm having trouble responding to this without being unreasonably rude. It's just so smug and misinformed. Making information available to everyone, regardless of class, status, or wealth, has always been the primary job of public librarians, and computers and the internet give them more ways to do that than ever. It's never been about prestige.
Fewer will choose to become professional librarians when municipal library systems employ less with formal training, and task those who have it with serving the prurient interests of transients and homeless people.
Sure, some of those people will also be helped to create electronic resume documents, and to access job boards, and to enroll in online education courses, and to generally make their lives better via access to information, and that is what librarians want out of the job, but they will also be crapped on--both by those who feel entitled to the services they provide, and by those who feel they are obsolete relics.