It's the same story with hardware. They take an active and alert interest in the thousands of experiments going on around them, forming opinions, defending them, changing their minds. They are engaged. They need to be. Some people are under the utterly erroneous perception that librarians will vanish into the electronic ether when technology really gets going.
Librarianship is the prime profession of the next millennium.
This can be easily demonstrated by conducting the simplest search on Altavista. It's the difference between a riot and a symphony. Anybody can participate in a riot. Symphonies need trained musicians and conductors. In a recent article I wrote for American Libraries, I wrote about the strong credibility enjoyed by most libraries.