Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by upvotinglurker 2922 days ago
> My point was more that, in this case, she is “just a librarian”, because this type of thing is what being a librarian is supposed to mean—it’s just that most people suck at being librarians,

In my experience (working in an academic library and interacting a lot with employees of other academic libraries), most actual present-day academic librarians do not suck at being a librarian. They're not as high-profile as Jessamyn West, but neither are they "computer literate old ladies" -- they use computers constantly in their daily work and are at least aware of issues with digital privacy, copyright law overreaches, etc. I suspect anyone who thinks "computer literate old lady" is still the normative example of a librarian, hasn't interacted with many librarians lately (or perhaps has limited experience e.g. in a small town library).