Thing 2

I just read Rick Anderson's "Away from the 'icebergs'" article, and I whole hartedly disagree with this approach in terms of my specialization. His suggestions that we should look "skeptically at the very idea of a library “collection” I think is unreasonable for my niche, the art community. Art hsitorians are one of the last to migrate from print; major works are still published onyl in print, and art historical texts soon go out of print and often are available in low numbers to start with, making out-of-print items ridiculously expensive if you missed the train to buy them the first go around.

I love the thought on library staff focusing on teaching; connecting patrons with information. I think we all would agree this is a daily mantra. However, he suggests thatour services need to change from lousy search interfaces, which I agree. However, one person cannot change the way giants run their databases, and it isn't like we can all refuse to sign our contract agreement for next year, or can we? Unfortuantely, I think the database vendors will only listen with the power of numbers, but i am not sure if we are willing to do that as a community. There is low rumblings in the distance of change, but I fear unless it happens sooner the library may loose it's "place" within some of the community.