Moving from a large investment in a central system to huge numbers of distributed computers connected by the network meant that computer centre managers were best placed to manage this development and plan for the future. Jordan was willing to acknowledge that librarians can cope with change. But this did not prove that they had the more appropriate skills to deal with the radical and rapid changes occurring in information services and teaching and learning. Whilst librarians seem to be keen to act as mediators between the user and the information they wish to access, computing staff want to remove all intermediaries. Robin McDonough, arguing the case for librarians, suggested that it was simply an accident of history that the computer was invented after the book.
Stability is also a notion foreign to computer centre managers.
Chris Hunt, opposing the motion, pointed out that whilst computer centre managers have degrees in real subjects, librarians studied subjects like media studies and sociology. Therefore computing people were more literate the better and numerate and had a greater grasp of reality. As for who makes the the better manager, the final test is money. Computer centre managers will go for any money going and fight tooth and nail to get it. The debate, whilst being a little vitriolic at times, was conducted with with good good humour throughout.