Headed for PLA

Well, I'll be heading up to Minneapolis next week for PLA. It will be a first for me, and I'm really looking forward to the experience. This is a practice posting to make sure I can post blogs during the conference for Selco. Let's just see if this works!

I've only made it through Thing #2, but that's actually the point at where I'm stuck. I agree public libraries need to make use of the technology. But, I haven't seen any substantive discussion on what it means for us in the long run. People are getting their information on the Internet themselves - whether it's good information or not - and they seem to be satisfied with it. Are we becoming more of a warehouse, simply trying for the fastest turnaround time on the bestsellers? Do we need any print reference sources anymore? What happens if we go to all online reference services? What's in place to make sure they're reliable? Who's keeping a record of the information provided by these services once it's replaced by updated info? Do we even need to worry about it?

I'm uncomfortable with jumping on the bandwagon without thinking about what it means for 2, 5 or 10 years down the road.