The Good Library Blog

I must confess that I've never seen these terminals. Nor do I have explicit knowledge of figures re staff downsizing so I'll limit my comments to, for want of a better definition, "the facts of life". 1) The only thing, and I mean the ONLY thing intelligent in this world is the human brain. IT is non-sentient and (so far as I am aware) non-self aware. No computer terminal can match the capability of the human brain (even a pretty thick one!), so the whole thing is probably yet another false economy which will end up costing more in maintenance and the loss of good will than the meagre salary of a healthy library assistant, but try telling that to those in charge of budgets who (I strongly suspect) look first and only at the wage bill when looking to make cuts without considering the intangible but potentially considerable benefits of committed staff nurturing repeat custom. I submit these benefits far outweigh the costs of their wages, but said benefits are by their very nature intangible and difficult to spell out on the balance sheet, so some bright spark thinks they'll both save some costs and be on the cutting edge of IT (not the "white heat of technology AGAIN!) by replacing staff who already come equipped with real brain matter with these modular Dalek thingummies with artificial brains which, sooner or later, the public will manage to muck up because no system is ever perfectly integrated and there will always be inconsistencies! 2) I have spent my entire life hearing about redundancy, downsizing and flexibility. Okay, sometimes there is need for it, but more often it is a hardwired management response inherited from our primal ancestors. In brief, it goes something ,like this: if in doubt, fire someone, then everyone fears you. The only way round this is the cool application of rational thought - and just how often does THAT happen! And so it will go on, anonymous. We'll probably end up with empty libraries full of broken-down machines squawking "does not compute" while redundant librarians cluster hopelessly round job centres and maybe even start vandalizing their former workplaces like those yobs did in Preston the other day! I don't know if this is much of an answer for you, but perhaps the real question we should all ponder is this: why do we consider it an advance to replace real brains - the mind of man is the most extraordinary computer of all, John F. Kennedy once said - with artificial ones? If we are going to upgrade, let us actually upgrade, not dress up downgrades as upgrades!