Mark - thanks for that great summary. If anyone is interested in the panelists slides, they are online on the NJSLA website. There was a great vibe at the event - new faces & lots of enthusiasm for the topic. Looking fwd to more "interactive" sessions like this in the future. If you have a suggestion for a topic, please let us know. All of the Officers email addresses are on the website or you can post comments here or you can use the Contact Us link on the top right-hand side of this page. Thanks, Cheryl

I was blown away by Guy's Alice Rankin talk last week. I thought it would be great if we could all share our reactions and impressions. It is easy to post comments to the NJSLA blog. Just register for a free TypePad account (at http://www.typepad.com) and then click on the comment link below. Lets get this conversation rolling.... I thought Guy's discussion of the 3 "missed opportunities" of specialized librarians was compelling, especially how we chose NOT to align with the "documentalists" in the 1960's. Special librarians like John Cotton Dana were change agents. What they promoted 100 years ago was a *revolutionary* idea -- that books don't matter unless you can take the knowledge - content - data from those books, reports, correspondence and put that knowledge to work to improve an organization's bottom line. What was once a radical idea is now mainstream as the Information Age reaches maturity. Well here we are - maybe 15,000-20,000 specialized librarians worldwide and the documentalists have evolved into "information scientists" - the I.T. field. That's more like several hundred thousand (or more) I.T. professionals worldwide. So was staying separate such a smart idea? I know that a lot of I.T. folks are the "plumbers" and are mainly occupied with the hardware, networks, and infrastructure. But what about all of the business analysts, data modellers, data miners, content managers, portal designers, search interface experts, etc? Aren't they stealing our thunder? And as far as research and reference, except for academia who needs "ready reference" anymore. A 10 yr old kid can use Google to find information that 30 years ago took a trained librarian hours. Research is evolving into the "very difficult" searching. The easy questions are falling away leaving opportunities for the few excellent super-searchers to step in and tackle the really difficult research. The opportunities in research are becoming rare - a job for the few. 30 yrs ago who could have fathomed that there would be a Google? What will research be like 30 years from now? What do YOU think about it all? --Cheryl