We worry about this in my library. I believe the ultimate problem is that the value of a librarian does not scale very well and incumbent librarians don't neces

We worry about this in my library. I believe the ultimate problem is that the value of a librarian does not scale very well and incumbent librarians don't necessarily have the skills or life experiences to pull it off. From my experience, short of working with PhDs, very few librarians actually perform complex tasks. So you have highly skilled laborers answering mundane reference questions all day. I predict most academic libraries will cease to exist and be replaced with large computer labs and study halls, with their electronic resources managed by IT departments and daily operations (circulation, interlibrary loan, copy cataloging) performed by work-study students and paraprofessionals.