We may even work outside a library setting, as consultants or publishers or database trainers. Librarians are colleagues in the research, teaching and strategic enterprise, whatever the parent institution or client base. Information formats will always co-exist, be they stone tablets and manuscripts, books and computers, or computers and something else. As formats proliferate and adapt to particular subjects or uses, the challenge is to locate them efficiently, evaluate and select among them to meet a given need. Not only must we understand the sources, we must have a sense of the seekers.
Librarians try to map the needs of users onto the patterns of available information.
We analyze the different purposes of communication, for example, education, leisure, creativity, information, or public debate, and what kinds of written, electronic or oral communication accompany each. We look at the behavior of different user groups. While we may serve children or engineers or senators separately, what the profession gra sps is the multiplicity of ways people get and use information. We track the publishing, computing, and related industries and how these affect the cost, format, and delivery of information. Even in the electronic environment, where there may not be a definable or ownable package, we still need to identify, organize, and categorize resources and develop secondary interfaces that direct users flexibly and accurately.