Re:Finland's cities are havens for library lovers
by fsloth on Sunday May 20, 2018 @11:33AM
(#17113167)
As long as books remain physical, labour will be required to handle them. Some parts of the library logistics can be automated, but not all. No robot is going to replace a human librarian any time soon.
Re:Finland's cities are havens for library lovers
by Mediterraneo10 on Sunday May 20, 2018 @11:47AM
(#17113247)
I was speaking about the possibility of slashing librarian numbers only in their role as customer-facing reference staff who help people look up information. Of course there will remain a place for some human librarians behind the scenes.
That said, Helsinki libraries have already automated a great deal. You can easily borrow items or reserve spaces without ever having to talk to a human being.
I wonder how long this will last in Finland, actually. Banking in Finland, for example, has slashed employees drastically and tried to get customers to do as much as possible online instead of visiting a branch and talking to a human being who has to be paid an expensive salary.
So far, at libraries in Helsinki you can easily talk to a librarian who is willing to help you find whatever obscure publications or media you are looking for. But some bureaucrat or political faction obsessed with cost-cutting and automation could see this as a bad thing and believe that library patrons should instead to expected to figure out how to just use Helmet/Helka/Arsca (Helsinki’s library catalogues) on their own, except perhaps for a very limited time slot each day.