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In my youth I spent a lot of time in libraries and to my recollection, there were various staff roles. There's a lot of labor involved in running a library and

In my youth I spent a lot of time in libraries and to my recollection, there were various staff roles. There's a lot of labor involved in running a library and most of it was done by clerks and pages. Actual librarians were somewhat scarce and they weren't just shelving books, a lot of their responsibilities were pretty high level, such as assisting patrons with research, designing the library's various educational programs, and curating collections of significant works. I can see how automation features like self checkout could replace some of the pages and clerks, but not the librarians. If for instance a journalist or historian (or anyone as it's a public service!) is doing research for their work, and needs to access the microfilms of old documents, the librarian is there to assist, and their function is invaluable - their existence is an investment by our society in increasing the accessibility and accuracy of facts. It seems like we need more people performing that function in the modern day, not less.

chrisjj 2y ago
The article is in error. The staff behind the counter are normally library assistants and very rarely librarians.
- bell-cot 2y ago
  True. Though as a regular reader...well, more like skimmer, of The Guardian - that level of fluff is SOP for them. You can (at best) guess whether they're omitting important background and details from a story to simplify it, or to fit their desired editorial tone, or out of ignorance.
yummypaint 2y ago
Yes, even the "best" modern web search tools still don't come close to human curated subject headings. Library science survived the blockchain fads, hopefully it will remain resilient to the AI hucksters who already think google is just as good as an academic database, having never actually used one.
- youerbt 2y ago
  And the modern web search tools don't even try to be good at searching, but some engagement-bullshit-here-is-something-that-might-interest-you contraption. I love listening to bootlegs (recording of a concert that is not official, mostly done by fans). I happen to be a fan of a band that has quite dedicated fan base and tons of bootlegs. I remember, and I'm quite sure of it, that I could type "<BAND> <SONG> <YEAR> live" in youtube search and get pages upon pages of exactly that. Recording of the song by the band, in given year. Today if I type "tool right in two live" I get: actually what I requested - 12 official audio - 1 cover song - 4 other song by the band - 12 full concert - 4 "reaction" video - 4 And after that there are mostly "reaction" videos, yea, just what I wanted. Try it out, it's actually funny (and sad).
  - hansvm 2y ago
    Nearly a 1/3 success rate for the first page of results? Honestly, I thought things were worse.
    - youerbt 2y ago
      Yes, I thought I just wanted to chill and listen to a song, but actually cutting-edge AI technology decided that I will have a better time listening to this car mechanic over-reacting to my favorite song, that he surely hears for the first time in his life. Not to mention that our AI-overlords coming out swinging, with a billion of dollars research behind, couldn't figure out that if I'm looking for a live recording of a song, then maybe, just maybe, I actually know those other songs too and could search those if I wanted to. Let's give them a few years to go back to search results they had a few years ago.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- matwood 2y ago
  Curation is hard and only getting harder with the sheer amount of content produced every year. AI/ML (whatever you want to call it) should be a tool to help librarians sift through the amount of content they need curate, but not think of it as a replacement for a human.
ptero 2y ago
I see libraries as very useful and like to hang around books. A few times I had to ask for a librarian's help with research I was blown away by the speed and quality of the response. For example I needed a list of FM transmitters in Europe above certain power and after failing to create one via a bunch of national registries asked for help -- and got exactly what I needed in a few hours. That said, let me be the devil's advocate. I see two key functions for librarians: research and access to unusual media, like microfiche. For research, the librarian does not need to be co-located with the library. Several librarians can work in a central location, like a research university or a national library, and serve the whole country. Microfilm or microfiche can (and probably should) be digitized and served out of the central location anyway. When someone was using the readers every week in a library it made sense to keep them everywhere. But now the use plummeted and machines (at least in some libraries) are always broken. We should scan those films and support a more modern access to the archives. My 2c.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > For research, the librarian does not need to be co-located with the library. Several librarians can work in a central location, like a research university or a national library, and serve the whole country. Schemes to do this sort of thing repeatedly fall across time and industries. The first problem is that people overestimate the amount of efficiency there is to be had. Oh, if we put them in a central location we can make 80% of them redundant. Ha! Librarians don't currently spend most of the day idle and somebody has to do the work they currently do regardless of where they're located. Meanwhile putting people in a central location generally makes things less efficient because now they're in a different location than the patrons and you've added communications overhead and, in the common case, a layer of middle management. The second problem is that knowledge is local. When a patron comes in and wants to know about historical buildings in the library's city, or local regulations, or community events, the local librarian knows where to find the information because that's where they are. The librarian 100+ miles away may not, because they're most familiar with where to find their locality's information rather than some far away place. The third problem is that diversity is advantageous. This is the sort of "laboratories of democracy" or "competitive markets are better than monopolies" effect. When everything is under one roof it becomes bureaucratic, resulting in ossification and resistance to change. Including changes that improve efficiency or outcomes. Whereas independent systems can each try a different thing and find out what works best in parallel, then look at how the others did and adopt their way of doing it if it seems better. Centralization efforts stamp that benefit out, and its long-term effect is cumulative because the benefits of the alternative accrete over time. This ultimately eats any nominal efficiency gains from the limited amount of legitimate redundancies that could be achieved through centralization. The fourth problem is that central locations tend to become a single point of failure. Having multiple copies of information stored at multiple independently-operated facilities has high resilience. Centralized systems have systemic risk, and the best known way to mitigate that risk is to redecentralize the system to remove the monoculture. In general if someone proposes to centralize a decentralized system to "improve efficiency" you should suspect them of malice, because the most steadfast proponents of centralization are generally adversaries who want to monopolize the system or adversaries who want to corral the system all into one place so they can more easily butcher it.

chrisjj 2y ago

The article is in error. The staff behind the counter are normally library assistants and very rarely librarians.

bell-cot 2y ago
True. Though as a regular reader...well, more like skimmer, of The Guardian - that level of fluff is SOP for them. You can (at best) guess whether they're omitting important background and details from a story to simplify it, or to fit their desired editorial tone, or out of ignorance.

yummypaint 2y ago

Yes, even the "best" modern web search tools still don't come close to human curated subject headings. Library science survived the blockchain fads, hopefully it will remain resilient to the AI hucksters who already think google is just as good as an academic database, having never actually used one.

youerbt 2y ago
And the modern web search tools don't even try to be good at searching, but some engagement-bullshit-here-is-something-that-might-interest-you contraption. I love listening to bootlegs (recording of a concert that is not official, mostly done by fans). I happen to be a fan of a band that has quite dedicated fan base and tons of bootlegs. I remember, and I'm quite sure of it, that I could type "<BAND> <SONG> <YEAR> live" in youtube search and get pages upon pages of exactly that. Recording of the song by the band, in given year. Today if I type "tool right in two live" I get: actually what I requested - 12 official audio - 1 cover song - 4 other song by the band - 12 full concert - 4 "reaction" video - 4 And after that there are mostly "reaction" videos, yea, just what I wanted. Try it out, it's actually funny (and sad).
- hansvm 2y ago
  Nearly a 1/3 success rate for the first page of results? Honestly, I thought things were worse.
  - youerbt 2y ago
    Yes, I thought I just wanted to chill and listen to a song, but actually cutting-edge AI technology decided that I will have a better time listening to this car mechanic over-reacting to my favorite song, that he surely hears for the first time in his life. Not to mention that our AI-overlords coming out swinging, with a billion of dollars research behind, couldn't figure out that if I'm looking for a live recording of a song, then maybe, just maybe, I actually know those other songs too and could search those if I wanted to. Let's give them a few years to go back to search results they had a few years ago.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
matwood 2y ago
Curation is hard and only getting harder with the sheer amount of content produced every year. AI/ML (whatever you want to call it) should be a tool to help librarians sift through the amount of content they need curate, but not think of it as a replacement for a human.

ptero 2y ago

I see libraries as very useful and like to hang around books. A few times I had to ask for a librarian's help with research I was blown away by the speed and quality of the response. For example I needed a list of FM transmitters in Europe above certain power and after failing to create one via a bunch of national registries asked for help -- and got exactly what I needed in a few hours. That said, let me be the devil's advocate. I see two key functions for librarians: research and access to unusual media, like microfiche. For research, the librarian does not need to be co-located with the library. Several librarians can work in a central location, like a research university or a national library, and serve the whole country. Microfilm or microfiche can (and probably should) be digitized and served out of the central location anyway. When someone was using the readers every week in a library it made sense to keep them everywhere. But now the use plummeted and machines (at least in some libraries) are always broken. We should scan those films and support a more modern access to the archives. My 2c.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> For research, the librarian does not need to be co-located with the library. Several librarians can work in a central location, like a research university or a national library, and serve the whole country. Schemes to do this sort of thing repeatedly fall across time and industries. The first problem is that people overestimate the amount of efficiency there is to be had. Oh, if we put them in a central location we can make 80% of them redundant. Ha! Librarians don't currently spend most of the day idle and somebody has to do the work they currently do regardless of where they're located. Meanwhile putting people in a central location generally makes things less efficient because now they're in a different location than the patrons and you've added communications overhead and, in the common case, a layer of middle management. The second problem is that knowledge is local. When a patron comes in and wants to know about historical buildings in the library's city, or local regulations, or community events, the local librarian knows where to find the information because that's where they are. The librarian 100+ miles away may not, because they're most familiar with where to find their locality's information rather than some far away place. The third problem is that diversity is advantageous. This is the sort of "laboratories of democracy" or "competitive markets are better than monopolies" effect. When everything is under one roof it becomes bureaucratic, resulting in ossification and resistance to change. Including changes that improve efficiency or outcomes. Whereas independent systems can each try a different thing and find out what works best in parallel, then look at how the others did and adopt their way of doing it if it seems better. Centralization efforts stamp that benefit out, and its long-term effect is cumulative because the benefits of the alternative accrete over time. This ultimately eats any nominal efficiency gains from the limited amount of legitimate redundancies that could be achieved through centralization. The fourth problem is that central locations tend to become a single point of failure. Having multiple copies of information stored at multiple independently-operated facilities has high resilience. Centralized systems have systemic risk, and the best known way to mitigate that risk is to redecentralize the system to remove the monoculture. In general if someone proposes to centralize a decentralized system to "improve efficiency" you should suspect them of malice, because the most steadfast proponents of centralization are generally adversaries who want to monopolize the system or adversaries who want to corral the system all into one place so they can more easily butcher it.