John Berry's editorial, "Check Change with Shera" (LJ 4/15/2005) closes with an admonition:

If we examine our future through Shera's rigorous yet optimistic eye, we will surely find, as he did, great opportunity and a great future for librarianship - especially if we heed his warning and we don't allow the technology to define our profession."

I suspect this passage holds some truth however I believe there is something more worth pressing here outside the context of keyboards, mice and panic buttons .

Machines are messengers, dumb conduits if you will. They automate processes much faster and more efficiently ( I've just been told that our web server is on the fritz...again) than we mere mortals with an MLS. But that's it. So why pick on the technology? Certainly there was never any danger of our profession being defined by a microfilm reader. It is technology's product (TP) that we should be discussing.

Two issues come to mind after reading Mr. Berry's editorial. First, how far have we, collectively as a profession, willingly conceded our historical responsibilities to TP? And what socialistic ideals does TP represent for our colleagues that aspire to de-commodify information? These developments are what I fear will define our profession.

Not long ago, librarians selected, developed and cultivated their collections. All mediums. Nothing slipped under the radar. A wonderful by-product of this was "quality control", a service still appreciated today by overwhelmed consumers with little time. If you can visualize Maslow's triangle, the ubiquitous "hair bun and cardigan" would have been at the top.

But our profession has changed. If something is digitized, and free, it's now steadfastly defended as part of that same collection that hitherto a decade before would have been subject to professional scrutiny. "Oh, but the Internet is different", I'm reminded, "Really, then so are we as a librarians" I reply. And we are.

Open access is now all the rage in conference hobnobbing. Frankly, I find myself struggling not to stare at the chandelier when cornered at the coffee and juice table when these discussions take place. That said, I have committed myself to staying, at least to some degree, in touch with this issue. "We are being screwed by the publishers", I'm told. "Yes, some of us are", I say. But does this mean "information wants to be free", as author McKenzie Wark believes?

I only ask the latter question to myself.

Information is a commodity. We have this fact to justify our existence and purpose. Consortial pressures and other consumer-based tacks can and will bring about market-based changes with overpriced journals. High prices and tight budgets are nothing new for libraries nor are they exclusive to journals. How many times have I wished to pick up Science Citation Index online or another Gale series but found it too expensive? I call the vendor and explain my fiscal situation. This worked with my getting a substantial discount with Gale, but not with SCI. Fine, I'll pursue other avenues with SCI and if enough of my colleagues do the same, we'll get a more attractive price.

But let's not forget there have always been library have's and have nots. Socialism has a place among libraries with resource sharing via interlibrary loan and cooperative collection development all taking place within the context of copyright . But their is nothing historical or necessarily virtuous about librarians demanding publishers to "give away" a product possibly made available by the depths of an authors pocket, rather than the recommendation of his or her peers. I'll save the issue of archiving for another time.

Ironically, some consider open access as a threat to invite those free market forces many in our profession decry.

"I see open access as a means to introduce market forces into a system that largely is devoid of them" so says SPARC executive director Richard Johnson ("Life After the NIH", LJ 4/15/05).

We'll see.

So, let's not shoot the messenger. Technology has no agenda. It's the TP and it's impact upon the quality of our collections we should be concerned with defining. Yes, the internet is another facet of a library collection.

Note: Reed Business does not offer a link to Mr. Berry's editorial which leaves me a bit more optimistic as I end this piece.