[baldfat]

As a former librarian I say YES!

The typical librarian actually doesn't fight for the access of materials but fights to enforce copy right stricter than the copy right law even calls for. At my college I took down the sign that said "No Copying of Books" at the photo copier and I put in place the actual copy right law. I can't tell you how many visiting librarians were "shocked" I did that. Well we also allowed bottles of water and talking in all areas except the study rooms and areas that had doors, but that is another story.

[panarky]

From page 12 of the actual ruling[1]:

  The Law of Fair Use: The ultimate goal of copyright is to expand
  public knowledge and understanding ... while authors are undoubtedly
  important intended beneficiaries of copyright, the ultimate,
  primary intended beneficiary is the public ...

[1] https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2461545/agvgoogle... [PDF]

[mangeletti]

This is awesome. I can remember clearly, in junior high school, the librarian informing us that we were only allowed to copy six pages of a book for homework assignments. I don't really have a strong opinion on much of this (one way or the other), because I'm not well enough informed on the topic, but I remember feeling weird about it, becaus the library aid made us feel like criminals for wanting to copy more than 6 pages. The library at that particular school was pretty substandard anyway.

I'm not so sure I won't be aging myself by saying this, but I feel very nostalgic about libraries, and the thought of them becoming obsolete saddens me, not so much because I can't imagine a future with mostly digital books, but because I always felt at home at the library (and not in the "there's a man sleeping under the 600s shelf" sort of way). I always felt a sort of wonderment at the library, and that others were there for the same reason added to that. I didn't visit the public library for school reasons, typically. Instead, I just sort of explored. I have always been a slow reader, so finding the exact right thing to read next was a bigger deal for me than just reading book after book.

I also volunteered as library aid in 12th grade, which was fun.

Are there others that feel / felt the same about libraries?

[njharman]

Digital is not a threat to libraries. Libraries have been some of the earliest adopters of digital materials.

DRM, copyright and the cultural myth perpetrated by big media producers that every tiny bit of content must be paid for are real the threats to libraries.

[tgb]

Yeah, we were only allowed to use the first 30 seconds of songs in school projects. Presumably that rumor started because of iTunes (which is crazy of course because iTunes obviously negotiates extra rights that you and I don't have). Meanwhile we just had to cite where entire photos came from! I think it was just the recency of the music piracy issues that made them care.

[dragonwriter]

> Yeah, we were only allowed to use the first 30 seconds of songs in school projects. Presumably that rumor started because of iTunes

More likely, it was a rule adopted because fair use analysis is generally helped by using a limited portion of the copyrighted work, and organizations concerned with liability don't really want everyone independently trying to figure out how limited a portion is limited, so they like to set some standard that is likely to be limited enough in most real cases of the type they are likely to be exposed to (e.g., nonprofitable educational uses, for school projects) as to mitigate risk sufficiently.

> Meanwhile we just had to cite where entire photos came from! I think it was just the recency of the music piracy issues that made them care.

That's actually perfectly sensible -- the demonstrated propensity of interested parties to file a lawsuit, and the likely damages in the case a suit is lost, are perfectly rational factors to consider when determining how to craft a legal risk mitigation policy.

[JupiterMoon]

In general photo content owners are as litigious as music ones.

[brianpan]

Did you have to pay for copies? If you were in junior high, I would assume that the 6 page limit is a cost limiting measure.

[Snhr]

I felt that way too, they always felt like a quiet retreat from anything you may be experiencing in life really. It was always so calm and peaceful in there. Never anything offensive to the senses going on. Finding that place in the back corner where there wasn't any foot traffic and getting lost in a book was possibly one of the best things I remember about childhood. It was also one of the few things you can do without needing any money.

Knowing all the different information that could be hidden inside these walls of books that I was surrounded by that might be interesting to me was also something special. You can get that with the internet but there's really no visual, material feeling you get actually seeing the amount of things you can learn about.

[eitally]

(maybe I'm misspeaking, but in general I think this holds whether it applies to your case or not so I'm going to say it anyway)

Once/if you have kids, you'll get to relive that joy of libraries all over again. :)

(unrelated: my school libraries also prevented excessive photocopying of books.)

[snogglethorpe]

I used to do research at the local branch of some official government research library, and they were very strict about enforcing such limits; they kept track of who copied what, how much, and when. They did not lend, and if the limit was six pages and you wanted to copy seven pages you were out of luck... [there was some timeout, so you could come back some days later and copy the remaining pages, but man was it ever a pain...]

If you asked them why, they were decent enough to provide some sort of reasoned argument based on the actual copyright law to explain this policy, so I don't think they were just being jerks.

[This was in the UK, so I dunno if the laws were worse or better than in the U.S.]

[nommm-nommm]

Libraries are not becoming obsolete.

[toomuchtodo]

First, thanks for being a librarian.

Second, I don't think traditional librarians know how quickly the end is coming. Libraries will still exist of course, possibly as makerspaces, possibly as community centers, but with collections like "Library Genesis" [+] and storage continually to plummet in price, in the next 5 years entire libraries could be carried in your pocket.

EDIT: I'm not saying librarians aren't necessary! Quite the contrary! I believe their roles are going to shift to be advisors and guides. I'm saying the idea of the library as a place to go get knowledge itself is going to tail off, since its available over the Internet Firehose.

[+] "Library Genesis is an online repository with over a million of user-contributed books and is the first project in history to offer everyone on the Internet free download of its entire book collection (as of this writing, about 15 Tb of data), together with the all metadata and code for webpages. The most popular earlier repositories, such as Gigapedia (later Library.nu), handled their upload and maintenance costs by selling advertising space to the pornographic and gambling industries. Legal action was initiated against them, and they were closed. News of the termination of Gigapedia/Library.nu strongly resonated in academic and book lovers’ circles and was even noted in the mainstream Internet media, just like other major world events. The decision by Library Genesis to share its resources has resulted in a network of identical sites (so-called mirrors) through the development of an entire range of Net services of metadata exchange and catalog maintenance, thus ensuring an exceptionally resistant survival architecture."

[Sanddancer]

A librarian's always been an adviser and guide. Curation is a huge part of what a librarian's task is. Librarians are also detectives, tasked with finding those obscure resources where you know of them, but not where to find them. There are times, for example, where one needs a specific edition of a book. A librarian would have a much better grasp of how to find that than a search engine.

We've got the resources now to put libraries in our pocket. Phones, tablets, etc can do so easily. At the same time, a library is more than the sum of its books, and needs more than just metadata to properly operate.

[toomuchtodo]

> There are times, for example, where one needs a specific edition of a book. A librarian would have a much better grasp of how to find that than a search engine.

You know, I might have agreed with you before. But after watching the Vanity Fair interview with Elon Musk and Sam Altman, and Sam talking about how no one person really understands how Google's first page results are created anymore, or how machine learning is matching people on dating sites (and those people are having babies, determined by machine learning), I think we're approaching an inflection point where algorithms will be able to provide that guidance.

We're not there yet, I agree with that. But we're closing fast on that future.

[baldfat]

In my opinions librarians are actually needed more now!

Yes we have a fire hose of content and people need people like librarians to help utilize that fire hose more.

When I left (I quit the job) being a librarian in 2008 more than 50% of librarians had lost their jobs in the next 2 years. Most people who handle budgets have your same idea.

My school district of 19,000 students had ONE librarian for all the elementary schools. CRAZY

[dingaling]

> people need people like librarians to help utilize that fire hose more

Given the explosion of niche interests over the past 50 years I don't think its feasible for librarians to provide that service except at extremes of the spectrum: internal university or corporate information of extreme specificity and controlled scope at one end, and public topics of general specificity at the other.

In the middle is a vast information space traditionally only explored and indexed by clubs and societies but now predominantly by the search engines.

Think about asking your local public librarian about functional programming, or the history of turbine-powered cars. They'll have to refer to a index of recommended texts[0] and hope there's something vaguely similar there, which is far inferior to a search engine which can access vast reservoirs of specialist discussion on such specific topics.

[0] I can't remember the name of this index after all this time but it lists 'go-to' references for a long list of topics.

[Bjartr]

> the explosion of niche interests over the past 50 years

Would you mind explaining what you mean here in a little more detail. I'm curious to learn more about this.

[cbr]

> Yes we have a fire hose of content and people need people > like librarians to help utilize that fire hose more.

Or we need to get better at automating the process of helping people find what they're looking for. That is, keep improving search engines.

[intopieces]

I agree with you about the end, but not that traditional librarians aren't aware of it. Because of their tenuous funding source, librarians have become masters at adaptation. They meet constantly to re-evaluate their goals and their place in the community. They are vitally important, especially to those with limited access to technology (homeless, working poor). I do see them evolving further as community centers and that's a good thing.

[jessriedel]

Based on your experience, do you think this kind of attitude just typical of the sorts of folks who tend to be librarians, or is there some top-down reason for it?

[baldfat]

One word - Lawsuit

Every time any of this is spoken it is in terms of job security. If the place you are employed at is sued you could then easily lose your job. It happens not a lot but enough to scare every librarian. When I proposed we leave the $4 a book library management system to a Open Source Evergreen the words spoken behind the companies was hysterically wrong but enough to scare anyone from using them. Back then Open Source meant evil and bad to librarians due to companies selling them goods spreading FUD.

[johansch]

I've seen this type of behavior in Sweden though. Noone is really afraid of that type of lawsuits here.

[JupiterMoon]

Even post Pirate Bay?

[johansch]

Why does the typical librarian behave like that? I have noticed the same thing.

Is it as simple as wanting to be in control over information, i.e. some small personal power?

[baldfat]

Read my Lawsuit reply in this comment thread.