AARL

The successful future of the librarian: bookman or knowledge worker?

Herbert S White
cornlgvaz@aol.com.nospam (please remove '.nospam' from address)

Abstract: Peter Drucker's description of a new profession of 'knowledge workers' and Andrew Osborn's call for 'bookmen' offer very different career directions for professional librarians. Knowledge workers are individuals who take the responsibility not only for informing end users about what they ought to see, but even more importantly what they need not bother to look at. This field, involving not only evaluation of information but filtering is now gaining its predicted strength, but there is no indication that librarians desire to compete for any part of it. Osborn's bookmen, by contrast, concentrate on the acquisition and bibliographic analysis of important materials, and it must be assumed that the term 'book' must now be broadened to include all types of information formats, both printed and electronic. However, librarians are now doing much less bibliographic analysis, transferring this work to the eventual end user. If librarians are then left only with acquisition, however defined, it is essential that they perform at least this task as effectively and rapidly as possible. This includes not only how materials are obtained for permanent future use, but increasingly how we request what was not originally selected and is now wanted, either for permanent retention or for temporary one-time use.

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