If you had asked a librarian why he or she had chosen their profession as recently as thirty years ago, the answer would have certainly involved the respondent’s love of books. After all, why choose a profession dedicated to the custodial care of codex conglomerations if you are only interested in other things?
How times have changed since those innocent days! Now we find librarians replaced by information scientists who spend their time staring into screens, either on their desktops or on their handheld telephones.. The books, once the raison d'être for a librarian, are now considered a physical annoyance that must be removed to continue the transformation of cavernous repository buildings into a curious combination of coffee house, restaurant, lounge, and video arcade. In fact, dealing with the books themselves has been regulated to the lower-paid members of the staff, much like cleaning the restrooms and seasonally shoveling snow from the entryways. The current COVID-19 pandemic will only sharpen the distinction between biblioposers and their maintenance colleagues. Who would want to handle all that virus-contaminated paper if they don’t have to?
