[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.