"Libarians, as a class, are the most useless over-educated people in the country."
I've always had a bit of a problem seeing them as a professional class. Oh, I suppose you need to have a general knowledge of literature and what books are being published and what books are worth buying and what aren't, but as far as technical knowledge is concerned, practically zip. I think that's part of the reason librarians talk so tough these days - they have an inferiority complex.
I've always had a bit of a problem seeing them as a professional class. Oh, I suppose you need to have a general knowledge of literature and what books are being published and what books are worth buying and what aren't, but as far as technical knowledge is concerned, practically zip. I think that's part of the reason librarians talk so tough these days - they have an inferiority complex. Tasks from my days, 15 years ago as a medical/science librarian:
Training pharmacy students on the use of drug databases.
Performing a variety of searches on a variety of databases and/or training students and faculty to do the same
Use of and training in print indexes of various technical and scientific literature -- most of them are now computerized these days.
Tracking down libraries that had obscure 19th century scientific journals, for interlibrary loan.
I never did any of the wide-ranging surveys and bibliography building in various technical areas, but there were librarians who did.
Medical librarians have been in the forefront of computerizing databases of scientific literature and research.
Now that was an academic librarianship -- Public libraries may not have quite as many technology intensive tasks.