Seth Godin is not a library professional -- he's a marketing guru with a string of best-selling books and a blog that manages to be both insightful AND brief on an astonishingly consistent basis. (http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ -- highly recommended). So he's outside the library world, looking in, and has a track record of seeing far and clear. Which means he's probably worth paying attention to when he writes about The Future Of The Library, as he does in the newest post on his blog: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/05/the-future-of-the-library.html To summarise: "The library is a house for the librarian ... [Kids] need a librarian more than ever (to figure out creative ways to find and use data). They need a library not at all ... We need librarians more than we ever did. What we don't need are mere clerks who guard dead paper." -- Mike.