Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

After The Book: Information Services For The 21st Century, Chuck Hodgin

Library Faculty Scholarship

Both inside and outside of the library, the use of print information objects declines while the use of electronic information objects escalates. This phenomenon and how libraries respond to it should be the chief concerns of librarians going forward, according to author George Stachokas. Stachokas argues that nearly everything about the practice of current librarianship is rooted in "the print era" and is therefore "intrinsically linked to the physical library" (35). Given that society "increasingly abandons print" (1), librarians face the daunting task of reshaping themselves and their profession; otherwise, they "risk the problem of seeming and becoming obsolete" (36). …