Re: Steven Abram's keynote address at OLA

After hearing his talk, I felt somewhat dazed by the magnitude of the challenges for libraries that he was describing. Abram did not deny the continuing strong demand for traditional library services, but he was certainly correct that younger people are less inclined to use those services in the same way, if they use them at all. A growing number of them are insisting on real-time 24/7 services, e-books, MP3 audio, online discussion groups, using credit cards and debit cards, etc. He warned about the blind acceptance of search results from Google and others that are heavily skewed by search engine optimizers, and this should frighten us all.  His suggestion that libraries need to be known as the place where people can be helped to ask quality questions sounds a whole lot easier than it will be to accomplish.  Wayne