I used to have a copy of this article (it’s probably still in my files and if I knew how to file I’d be awesome!). Anyway, I do remember that sometime in 1956 or 1957 Wilson Library Bulletin published an article about whether libraries should do telephone reference. The long and short of it is that libraries should not. If the question isn’t important enough to get off your butt and come to the library, then it’s not important enough to answer. Wow.
So, here’s another opinion from 1971:
“It should be stamped out ‘…the computer is not for library use; that all the promises offered in its name are completely fraudulent; and that not only is it extremely expensive compared to other methods at this time, but that it will become increasingly expensive in the future; that it has been wrapped so completely in an aura of unreason that fine intelligences are completely uprooted when talking about it; that its use in a library weakens the library as a whole by draining off large sums of money for a small return; and that it should be stamped out.”
–Ellsworth Mason, “Along the Academic Way,” LJ, May 15, 1971″
(See Also:’The great gas bubble prick’t; or, Computers revealed’ by a Gentleman of Quality [Ellsworth Mason] in College and Research Libraries, 32 (May 1971): 183-196.)
I love that one of the markers of a transformational technology is that it eventually riles the establishment from the sleepy daze.
Stephen
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This explains so much about the profession at times. “If you can’t be bothered to call, we aren’t going to answer your email.” That sort of deal.
Yikes.