Breaking the barriers of time and space: the dawning of the great age of librarians.

I want to start by quoting Andrew Pettegree, who points out that the dawn of the age of print was a tough time for libraries. He says, The university libraries in Oxford and Cambridge fell into disuse. In Oxford the process of destruction was complete by January 1556, when the university made arrangements to sell off the library furniture. By making ownership of books so much more common, print diminished the lustre of the Renaissance library…With possession of texts spreading through society it required a connoisseur or scholar to appreciate the special magnificence of the greatest collections. The mere accumulation of texts was no longer enough to impress a casual visitor and the library receded as a focus for conspicuous princely wealth. Many of the great fifteenth- and sixteenth-century collections did not survive. In short, The library as a cultural institution struggled to adapt to the new age of print. [1] Of course, the library as a cultural institution did adapt, leading eventually to what I think of as the “Great Age of Libraries,” lasting for perhaps 115 years or so, beginning in the late 19th century. This was an age of immense collection building, a scientific approach to the management of those collections, and an increasing focus on the role of the librarian in ensuring broad and equitable access to the knowledge contained in those collections. In 1556, the future of libraries might have looked bleak, but 400 years later, the best of them were grand and wonderful institutions, indeed. You might think that I offer this comparison to provide some comfort, to argue against the doom and gloom that we have been hearing for many years. Some of you may have seen last January, in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the “Academic Library Autopsy Report, 2050,” which aroused a flurry of defensive comments from librarians and others eager to rebut the notion that the academic library was in mortal danger [2]. There are many other examples. But actually, I am not here to provide that kind of comfort. In its impact on libraries, the shift to a digital world is far more profound than the shift from manuscript books to printed books. I agree with those who argue that libraries are becoming less relevant to the members of the communities that we serve. I understand that this is deeply upsetting to librarians. In 2005, I gave a plenary talk at the “Charleston Conference” that touched on some of the themes that I intend to address today. I titled it “The End of Libraries.” When I received the preprogram I was surprised, and somewhat amused, to find that my title had been changed to the grammatically awkward, “The End of Libraries as We Know It.” The starkness of my actual title was apparently just a little too much to deal with. The fact, though, is that I do not find this thought terribly distressing. To a considerable extent, this situation for libraries comes about because many of the needs that the twentieth century library was designed to address are now being better addressed via digital technologies and associated advances. As citizens of the world, we should be celebrating that fact. This is not to say, of course, that these advances address all of the social needs that twentieth century libraries attempted to resolve. But for us to come to a clear understanding of these changes, and what they mean for us as individuals, requires that we think clearly and analytically about our relationship, as librarians, to both our libraries and to the larger communities that we serve. Indeed, I believe that if we do this, we find that while the great age of libraries is coming to an end, the great age of librarians is just beginning. In 1999, I wanted to become the editor of the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association (BMLA) because I love the way that words work. And I thought that I could be a good editor, at least in part, because I would pay close attention to the construction of sentences. I would help the authors be sure that the sentences that they wrote really said the things that they were trying to say. I became a maniac for editing, fascinated by how often our word choices obscure meaning, rather than clarify it. I edited road signs and billboards. My favorite sign of all time was on a drive-up ATM: “Please stay in your car with the doors and windows closed and locked at all times while using this machine.” I noticed something in the articles that I was editing. Once it caught my attention, I began to notice it more and more, and it began to bother me. Then it became an obsession. And then it began to lead me to a fresh understanding of our profession and our future. Many of the articles that were being submitted described exciting and interesting projects. They reported cases of individuals doing fascinating and worthwhile new things, studies of groups of people that we served with the aim of learning to serve them better, and analyses of information and the ways in which its delivery was changing. But throughout this varied catalog of articles, I noticed a consistent thread. Whatever it was that was being done, it was the library that was reported as the agent. It was “The Library” that had initiated this new program or was engaged in this particular interesting project. The more that I noticed this, the more it began to trouble me. “Libraries,” I thought, “are just buildings, or gatherings of objects, or an abstract diagram on an organization chart. Libraries don't do anything—people do.” It is the librarians and their professional and paraprofessional colleagues who get things done. I started suggesting to authors that they change their phrasing, that they emphasize the importance of the people behind the actions. I started thinking about the roles that librarians have played throughout the centuries and that while libraries—be they buildings, collections, or organizations—have been the tools that we have used to deliver our service to society and culture, we have allowed them to overshadow the importance of the people who actually get things done. The Janet Doe Lecture is supposed to be about the history or philosophy of medical librarianship. I am going to try to do a bit of both. I want to start by spending some time talking a little about what we have done in the past and then move from that to make some suggestions for a philosophy of librarianship that I think can guide us as we advance further into this quite amazing twenty-first century.