Fired up or frustrated?

A couple of library blogs posts got me a bit fired up - or maybe it was the mochaccino and half a spinach & cream cheese muffin from our neighbouring muffin break. The first was Michael Stephen's post on tame the Web "Ten Things I Know About Libraries in 2006 (A Response to "Libraries are Obsolete")". The article that he is responding to has received quite a lot of reponses in the library blogosphere (did you even know that such a thing existed?) and you can read it here. Basically it's saying don't build another library - give people at home access to broadband and then they can get everything off Google. As most librarians will tell you there's a lot that isn't accessible through Google, however its a popular view.

But what kind put the icing on the cake for me this morning was SuperPatron's posting "Library catalogs have represented stagnant technology for close to twenty years" which echoes exactly what I've been feeling for years. How come we're stuck with library catalogues with such antiquated search technology when Google and Amazon (and del.icio.us etc etc etc) have advanced so far over the years? And how are we supposed to convince our publics that we're still relevant? grrr