Librarian: James Billington Sees a Bright Future Beyond Books
Librarians do a lot more than take care of books. "There is a huge appetite for knowledge and information in the global marketplace," says James Billington, the 13th Librarian of Congress. "This stuff is exploding in an unsorted way on the Internet. You have to be able to choose and judge and be reasonably conversant with the new technology."
That's why he championed the library's American Memory National Digital Library program, which has made more than 8.5 million American historical items available online, free.
Will the Internet make librarians obsolete? On the contrary, Billington believes. Librarians, he says, are the intermediaries who will help connect people to the information they need. "People are going to rediscover libraries and help cure the arrogance that you can sit in front of a machine and get all the information you need to know," he says.
As for the job, it will remain enriching as ever, he predicts: "You're widening your own horizons and helping other people widen theirs. Someone is paying you–usually not adequately–for a life of continuous learning and the satisfaction of sharing it with other people."
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