I mean he may later expand on this short article and go crazy and say that technology and other media are ruining libraries and we should toss out computers and use the card catalog. In which case we can pat him on the head and back away slowly. In the meanwhile I think it’s worthwhile to take away some of his more useful points instead of making it a oldschool vs. newschool showdown. I absolutely understand what you mean about the importance of other media, higher education faces many of the same challenges when providing services and instruction. There’s a whole lot of people out there that see the latest trends and get caught up in all the hype and throw a lot of technology services at their users without much thought about why and ignore existing problems in favor of the next big thing. I’ve seen it happen so many times I sort of sympathize with his lament about the children’s area that “got it all wrong”.

This really isn’t the sort of conversation we should type

While he might have this feeling as an academic librarian, his experience does not reflect mine as a public librarian or other librarians that I know. I may be refilling the paper in the printer, but that is one duty out of a hundred that I do in one day. I’m helping people solving the problems in their life, providing materials (especially books) to feed their curiosity, and working towards better (not necessarily bigger) collections in the future.