SLA2005 - Globe article

Read this in the paper this morning.  Incidentally, the Globe and Mail is one of only two national newspapers in Canada, so lots of Canadians will see this article.  The online title is good: "Librarians as tech-savvy sleuths" (alternate link).  The headline in the paper was something along the lines of "Marian the librarian doesn't work here any more" (accompanied by a large photo of a librarian getting a massage).  There's some good content in the middle:

Special librarians, as they're called, typically work for big corporations, private companies, government agencies, museums, hospitals, associations and consulting firms that manage information.

"The membership is as diverse as any group you're going to find," Ms. Freeman said in the overheated exhibit hall this week, where 260 firms in the information field had booths. ...

In an age where all kinds of information can be had all kinds of ways, it apparently takes all kinds of people to find it, package it and get it where it needs to go -- and fast.

Special librarians, Ms. Freeman said, used to be "gatekeepers" of information with near-exclusive access to reference volumes and files, but technology has changed all that, giving anyone with an Internet connection access to reams of data.

This, in turn, has forced librarians to evolve into tech-savvy sleuths, able to sift quickly through vast amounts of on-line material -- plenty of it questionable, if not useless -- to find what their companies or clients need.

"These folks are on the very cutting edge," Ms. Freeman said.

They also spend a lot more time showing their fellow employees how to conduct effective research on their own, rather than finding the answers for them.

"Information intelligence and information literacy is the answer," said Juanita Richardson, a consultant for an on-line news distributor in Toronto, who said she has become "more of an enabler" than a provider of facts.

The rest of the article is mostly about breaking librarian stereotypes.  I was going to blog this in the main conference blog, but Jane Dysart beat me to it.