End of the librarian? Council cuts and new tech push profession to the brink
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
I can see how automation features like self checkout could replace some of the pages and clerks, but not the librarians. If for instance a journalist or historian (or anyone as it's a public service!) is doing research for their work, and needs to access the microfilms of old documents, the librarian is there to assist, and their function is invaluable - their existence is an investment by our society in increasing the accessibility and accuracy of facts. It seems like we need more people performing that function in the modern day, not less.
I love listening to bootlegs (recording of a concert that is not official, mostly done by fans). I happen to be a fan of a band that has quite dedicated fan base and tons of bootlegs. I remember, and I'm quite sure of it, that I could type "<BAND> <SONG> <YEAR> live" in youtube search and get pages upon pages of exactly that. Recording of the song by the band, in given year.
Today if I type "tool right in two live" I get:
actually what I requested - 12
official audio - 1
cover song - 4
other song by the band - 12
full concert - 4
"reaction" video - 4
And after that there are mostly "reaction" videos, yea, just what I wanted. Try it out, it's actually funny (and sad).
Not to mention that our AI-overlords coming out swinging, with a billion of dollars research behind, couldn't figure out that if I'm looking for a live recording of a song, then maybe, just maybe, I actually know those other songs too and could search those if I wanted to. Let's give them a few years to go back to search results they had a few years ago.
That said, let me be the devil's advocate. I see two key functions for librarians: research and access to unusual media, like microfiche. For research, the librarian does not need to be co-located with the library. Several librarians can work in a central location, like a research university or a national library, and serve the whole country.
Microfilm or microfiche can (and probably should) be digitized and served out of the central location anyway. When someone was using the readers every week in a library it made sense to keep them everywhere. But now the use plummeted and machines (at least in some libraries) are always broken. We should scan those films and support a more modern access to the archives. My 2c.
Schemes to do this sort of thing repeatedly fall across time and industries.
The first problem is that people overestimate the amount of efficiency there is to be had. Oh, if we put them in a central location we can make 80% of them redundant. Ha! Librarians don't currently spend most of the day idle and somebody has to do the work they currently do regardless of where they're located. Meanwhile putting people in a central location generally makes things less efficient because now they're in a different location than the patrons and you've added communications overhead and, in the common case, a layer of middle management.
The second problem is that knowledge is local. When a patron comes in and wants to know about historical buildings in the library's city, or local regulations, or community events, the local librarian knows where to find the information because that's where they are. The librarian 100+ miles away may not, because they're most familiar with where to find their locality's information rather than some far away place.
The third problem is that diversity is advantageous. This is the sort of "laboratories of democracy" or "competitive markets are better than monopolies" effect. When everything is under one roof it becomes bureaucratic, resulting in ossification and resistance to change. Including changes that improve efficiency or outcomes. Whereas independent systems can each try a different thing and find out what works best in parallel, then look at how the others did and adopt their way of doing it if it seems better. Centralization efforts stamp that benefit out, and its long-term effect is cumulative because the benefits of the alternative accrete over time. This ultimately eats any nominal efficiency gains from the limited amount of legitimate redundancies that could be achieved through centralization.
The fourth problem is that central locations tend to become a single point of failure. Having multiple copies of information stored at multiple independently-operated facilities has high resilience. Centralized systems have systemic risk, and the best known way to mitigate that risk is to redecentralize the system to remove the monoculture.
In general if someone proposes to centralize a decentralized system to "improve efficiency" you should suspect them of malice, because the most steadfast proponents of centralization are generally adversaries who want to monopolize the system or adversaries who want to corral the system all into one place so they can more easily butcher it.
> Schemes to do this sort of thing repeatedly fall [fail?] across time and industries. The first problem is that people overestimate the amount of efficiency there is to be had. ... The second problem is that knowledge is local. ... The third problem is that diversity is advantageous.
Those are good general points. My main counter-argument is that they would trump the desire for change if we had a well working system. We do not. The current system is failing (and the article contains strong indication of this) and needs restructuring to avoid extinction. There are different ways to try it but all require honest, public discussions on what we want to have and how much we are willing to pay.
> The fourth problem is that central locations tend to become a single point of failure.
All else being equal, yes. But today's local library archives are often a mess that no one really cares about. Paper, microfilm and microfiche are vulnerable to the elements. I have seen a leak take out a local archive. A local volunteer can box records and move them to a home as a last resort, but there are fewer and fewer of such people around. At this point there is no excuse not to scan those archives and store a local backup, a cloud backup and a few more backups for good measure, too.
I don't think there have been any major problems with it.
You need to go through an induction course on things like fire safety, then you use your library card and PIN to enter the building out of staffed hours.
It's very convenient to be able to go at any time from approx 08:00 to 19:30 every day.
The "tailgating" problem is a little overblown - you're encouraged not to let others in, but they know that you can't do anything to stop it, and they don't expect you to put yourself in any danger.
There are still staffed hours throughout the week, and these work on a sort of rotation so that a neighbouring library will likely be open if your local one is unstaffed.
Also, as an outsider, UK housing prices outside of London are actually quite affordable. With the current strength of the dollar a lot of very nice places in the UK are at price parity with Arkansas/Mississippi.
I don't know what prices you see for houses in those states, but do also be aware that UK houses are generally on the small side.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...
Nice if you can afford it, but most people can't.
"I know you don't want to move from London to Hartlepool but take solace in the fact the economy is up half a percent"
The winners only received ~1.5٪ more votes than their previous "disastrous" result.
The gains were largely due to the incumbent Tory votes being split by Reform, an extremely anti-immigration populist party.
> as an outsider, UK housing prices outside of London are actually quite affordable.
Much like Arkansas/Mississipi, both opportunity and salary are much lower than high CoL areas like London/California.
Both rent and house prices in the UK have far outstripped our comparable neighbours and are causing real issues for people.
New build housing is energy efficient but of poor quality and extremely expensive, often furnished with unusably small rooms.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/28/nearly-one-i...
Like Amazon's "Go" self-service stores, which are working out so well for them?
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/amazon-ends-ai-power...
But none of the jobs of self-service technology, smartcards for entry and CCTV are currently done by librarians.
Seriously? How do they think a camera can prevent tailgating?
The same BoJo was very enthusiastic about financing wars and torpedoing peace agreements.
But financing open access libraries? Hell, no! People might start to think on their own.
Johnson not in charge of what these libraries are facing, the damage he caused is too distant — blame Sunak for not reversing those things if blame is more important to you than repairing the situation, but for the latter the ball is in Labour's court.
Maybe he'll fix the library situation for positive PR, it doesn't cost much.
And Johnson didn't "just" expose what was going on behind the scenes, the point I was demonstrating is that he was so bad he was forced out of office even by the very party that itself was removed from office for being bad.
If you want to argue that the UK electoral system is bad, I'd agree — yet your claim is neither evidence of that nor is it related to this story.