[PADG:1419] RE: Item of Possible Interest

["Frost, Gary" <gary-frost@xxxxxxxxx>]

Title: Item of Possible Interest

“Mr. Arms can also be heard in an Educause interview, where he expressed his hope that in ten years ‘less than half the senior management in libraries’ will have MLS degrees.”

There was a time when no librarians had an MLS although they did have subject expertise. One layer of the education agenda is how much of the librarian’s skill should be in mediation between formats rather than subjects. As a preservation worker I would suggest emphasis now on format mediation skills since those are the terms in which to advance the continuing role of preservation and print. What makes an electronic resource engineer a librarian is an accord with the continuing role of preservation and print as a defining characteristic of the digital library.

Gary Frost