userslib.com

There’s a recent trend at our library: non-public service librarians volunteering to do reference. I think this is great! Since my “Interface & User Testing Specialist” position is a primarily HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) based job and doesn’t include any reference duties, I started volunteering a couple of semesters ago. Because it’s part of my job to understand library users – what better way to do that than to spend a couple hours a week helping patrons navigate the tons of resources available to them. Its one thing to look at an online resource and declare “this is so not intuitive!” and another thing to have to repeatedly try to explain to patrons the 20 steps required to find what they want. I feel very lucky to be in a position where I have the opportunity to interact directly with our users outside of an official usability context.

So back to the title of this post. Periodically the idea that librarians are going to become obsolete reemerges. Right, everything is going to be online and fully searchable. But there’s going to be exponentially more information every year. And much of this information will remain proprietary and subscription based. Of course I’m a big proponent of having easy to use interfaces, but interfaces are only useful if they themselves can be found. This is where librarians come in. They are the sifters, funnels, aggregators, and above all mediators between the people and the technology.