Hi All,
This is reassuring....   murray

Today's Tipple - Librarians
Author: Simon Collery
Date:   29-11-00 20:43
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,40308,00.html
Ask a Librarian, Not Jeeves
by Kendra Mayfield

This Tipple is about an issue rather than being about one particular site.  The title of the above
article from Wired seems to assume that there is something surprising in the idea of asking a librarian
for help with finding information, rather than searching the Web for it. Journalists seem to have
asked the question 'Have librarians been rendered obsolete by the Web?' and come up with the
premature affirmative answer, one completely undetermined by the evidence.

The article is about the Collaborative Digital Reference Service (CDRS), which you can find out
about here: http://lcweb.loc.gov/rr/digiref/ It will consist of an international network of online
librarians using, not only the best resources of the Web, but the best resources in libraries and the
intellectual resources of participating librarians.  They will be catering for researchers, rather than for
general library users.

We all recognise that the Web holds a lot material of questionable quality and much of that is hard to
get at.  Librarians will be doing what they do best, advising on the most expeditious use of the Web,
as well as full utilization of offline resources.  Free availability of material, either on the Web or in
libraries, does not guarantee that people will be able to find it or even assess their own needs
without professional help.

With the CDRS you will be able to contact an expert by email, fax, phone (and, I assume, ICQ and
similar tools in certain cases) or call around in person.  And your queries will be routed to the place
best suited to your needs.  Ever since many sources of information moved from libraries to the Web,
librarians have been coming to the Web to help sort out the resulting untidy ocean of data that is the
WWW.  The CDRS aims to help coordinate these librarians.

The CDRS, which hopes to be global and multilingual and available 24/7 in the future, was mentioned
in the Bar last week http://www.freepint.co.uk/bar/read.php?i=6084 with a question about whether
there is something similar in the UK.  Another Free Pinter pointed us to EARL's 'Ask a Librarian' site
which is at http://www.earl.org.uk/ask/index.html EARL will attempt to answer general questions
about anything and everything.  It also aims to be available 24/7 and to answer questions from non
UK users as well as UK users.

Far from spelling the end of libraries and librarians, the popularity of the Web should provide
librarians with more needy clients than they have ever had before.  Journalists, to the extent that they
are users of information, should recognise the importance of those who provide for their information
needs.

Cheers

Simon

Content Developer, Free Pint

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