Our annual conference for LAS – Librarians For Tomorrow 2012 was held on the 25th September at the Matrix of Biopolis. It was well attended by about 240 participants. This year we had introduced 2 panels of discussions – the first panel consisted of professionals from outside of our industry and the second panel consisted of a mixture of new librarians with seasoned veterans.
Unfortunately, due to time constraints not all the questions posted by our participants could be addressed, so we are highlighting the questions raised on the Pigeonhole platform for the 2 panels here – please feel free to comment and discuss further!
List of questions posted for Panel 1:
“I’m curious to know what do you think the value of librarians in media companies and the social media companies?”
“How important will the physical library be in the future? Should libraries reduce their physical collections and areas?”
“What do you expect librarians to do differently?”
“What roles do you think Libraries should have on Facebook and other social media websites? Should they be formal, friendly?”
“What will be the future of library?”
“Will Google Singapore be employing a librarian?” – “And what competencies will this librarian need?”
“Do you think Facebook needs Librarians?”
“We’ve been saying all the nice things about libraries and librarians. Panelists, can you share just 1 thing you don’t like about libraries?”
“What would you do if you were a librarian?”
“Do you forsee librarians playing the role of seeking to provide hard-to-find and obscure information or publications?”
“What sort of personality should a library have?”
“Is there a need for librarians to change their mindsets and strategies in order to stay relevant now and in the future?”
“Why are librarians worrying about tomorrow? Why are they keen to make sense? What are your answers to these?”
“When you’re frustrated in searching, have you ever thought to ask a librarian?”
“‘Librarians Make Sense’, the name of movie for Gene Tan?”
“What do you think librarians actually do? Some people think we … gulp … shelf books!”
“Librarians of tmr will need to engage teens more to encourage n connect with them n get them to read more. Any approach on how that can be done?”
“By giving up professional qualifications we are actually downgrading the quality of librarians. If this happens will there be librarians for tomorrow? This is going back n making librarianship obsolete.”
“Different niche for each library?”
“Should libraries be more queit or noisy?”
“Does google book digitization project plan to expand beyond US?”
“Many people prefer to watch a movie than read a book; prefer more visuals than text. Whaat is yr view?”
List of questions posted for Panel 2:
“Will librarians need library/information school qualifications in the future?”
“What are the new things you think we ought to be doing?”
“Should we be more skill based instead of content based?”
“How important will library buildings, spaces as physical collections be in the future?”
“Are we really at war with google and the internet?”
“Should librarians be specialists or multitasker?”
“Where do you see libraries perhaps in 5 years from now?”
“In car racing like F1, it is often said whether it is the man or the machine that makes a champion. In the context of librarianship which is more important, librarian or the mobile skills?”
“What are some traits or attitudes which librarians HAVE to change for the future?? Why?”
“In time of war, wld u rather save nurse, lawyer or librarian?”
“How do libraries use social media?”
“What do you not like about libraries and librarians?”
“Libraries were once at the forefront of innovation. Today, that leadership has been taken over by advancements in IT such as natural language processing. What went wrong along the way?”
“If librarians r important why do some library outsource ref desk duties to part-timers?”
“Are there any librarians in Singapore who participate in editing or vetting Wikipedia articles?”
“Librarians may need to learn some tips from marketing & sales professionals to help our users?”
“If librarians were more active in civic discourse, what should be the issues/causes librarians should focus on?”
“Should we focus more on meeting user expectations or on leading our users in the information world? Trust our users or educate them about things they might be unaware of?”
“There are anthropologists in libraries (in the US mainly), and at Facebook! How about here? can we behave like anthropologists if we embed ourselves within our user groups? Learn and then respond?”
“Libraries should reinvent themselves as data repository center (e.g. Research data, state related data etc.) to stay relevant. What are your comments?”
“Agree lib shld play bigger role in civic society. but unless we immerse in those fields our kwldge base is too small. Maybe we shld go learn from users than assume we know enough to help & teach them.”
“I think title or qualifications is not important. But the passion is most important. There are qualified librarians that does not portray the profession. Comments.”
“Where can you find a specialist in everything?”
Please feel free to continue to comment and discuss using our blog interface – these matters are of interest to our community – any perspectives may be able to help us think further on the topics raised. Thanks in advance!
Reported by Yit