From: ehp@poe.acc.Virginia.EDU ("Didi Pancake")
Subject: Re: Libraries
Organization: University of Virginia
Date: Wed, 16 Dec 1992 18:43:25 GMT


Speaking through my librarian's hat...thanks for the kind words about all
the stuff we can do for and provide to anyone looking for information
about anything. The whole world of information is becoming so complex (so
much of it, so many ways to get at it) that the average person cannot
hope to know how to find detailed information in more than a few areas of
interest. 

And thanks for mentioning that getting to know the librarians is an
important piece of using a library. Like anyone else in the world, we
tend to do our best work and go the farthest out of our way to help those
who treat us like "real" people rather than office furniture. For
example, my favorite person to help is a professor in the Astronomy dept.
who occasionally just drops in and spends a while discussing his research
topics with me...just for fun. For this he receives an interested and
attentive ear, and the very best services of an expert (me) when he does
need to find some obscure (or not-so-obscure but out of his field) bit of
information.

We are the experts in locating and providing the records of
civilization...that sounds pretentious, but that's just what it is
whether printed in books, recorded on any form of tape or disk, still in
manuscript form, or only as arrangements of electrons. We do not KNOW all
that information...we do know how to find it. In my opinion, no career or
profession makes its practitioners intrinsically smarter or better than
any other--it just makes them experts in one area. Our expertise is the
area of information--locating, collecting, preserving, organizing, and
delivering information.

Whether your local librarian is at a college or university library, or at
a branch of a rural public library, he or she can (read should be able to
or something is wrong with the administration of that organization) track
down and obtain virtually anything you may need. There may be direct
costs to you involved...TANSTAAFL...but the same is true if you went out
and bought a book and THEN you'd have to figure out where to keep it.

Actually, you folks with Internet access are enormously better off than
folks without. You can connect to the online catalogs of most of the
world's greatest research libraries. You can connect to innumerable
indexes and databases that show where information is located. By doing
some of your own locating of resources, you can provide the information
that will allow any librarian to "pass go, collect $220" AND get the
material you want in the shortest amount of time. Even the Backwater
Branch of Podunk Public Library is hooked into a system of 
regional/statewide/national cooperative lending libraries. With the
information from your access to Internet, even a tiny library with no
online resources of its own can plug that information into the system and
get the book or article you found at some other institution.

Finally (then I'll turn off the bubble machine), I would like to
reiterate an idea that was hinted at in your posting. There are diffeent
levels of library employees with differing levels of expertise in
locating information. This is just like most other professions...you
don't expect the receptionist or bookkeeper in the doctors' office to be
competent to take out your appendix. There are meny talented and expert
people working in libraries who are not professional librarians. These
staff members can often handle almost any request you may have, and are
sometimes extremely expert in some subject area. However, if you DON'T
get the information you think you need, please, please don't just give us
and walk out. Find the professional in charge and ask her or him your
question.

Thanks for "listening."
--
|   Didi Pancake          |    Managing professionals                  |
|   ehp@virginia.edu      |                  is like herding cats!     |
|----------------------------------------------------------------------|
| All the usual disclaimers about the origins of these opinions apply. |