[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.