Anonymous Patron writes “Competing in high gear is a newsday.com article that features Steven M. Cohen:
The new frontier of librarians is concerned with expanding the scope of their profession. “Libraries compete now with search engines, with TV, with cable,” Cohen said.”
Expanding without modernising?
How can the library expand its professional scope without modernising and adapting new technologies and methodologies, when we are stuck with archaic methods such as MARC and AACR2? Can you imagine businesses still using typewriters instead of Microsoft Word or equivalent?
An advocate for better rss interfaces.
Steven M. Cohen should be looked to to advocate for rss interfaces that would not require the learning curve that is currently too steep and too long for most libraries, libraries users and libraries staff.
bit of a stretch
Finding out a client is being sued before the client does is a PR coup but not exactly something that belongs on a resume. I agree that monitoring information on clients is valuable in a business or private law firm library but what he’s doing is building a collection on them for the lawyers to access. He’s not competing with TV or search engines, he’s using them more effectively than the lawyers would.
I guess what annoys me about it is that this is considered some new model that replaces “The image of the librarian as the lady with the bun and the flat shoes who says ‘shush’ and is forbidding is about as outdated as you can get”. The old model still exists and should still exist in a public library where you deal with a wide range of patrons at various stages of maturity. It does not, *and has never* applied to private libraries who deal with a mature clientele.