I enjoyed the article by Robert Berring in the current issue of Law Library Journal wherein he examines the impact of technology on law libraries though it is more a meditation on the future of librarianship. His analysis builds on a four-activity model of the professional work: materials gathering, records generation, arrangement/preservation, and distribution, all of which have been or are in the midst of profound change. Successful information organization and retrieval now, he argues, is the product of new systems, driven by profit and geared up for efficiency and speed of retrieval. As he says:
“There is no point lamenting this development. The battle is over and mediation of information by librarians lost”.
Provocative stuff. But if that were not enough, he ends by arguing that the shift from the paper book to the digital document also marks the end of the best scholarship in librarianship which was premised on the physical artifact. Not sure I agree with that one Robert but time will tell.