the preservation function is the only characteristic of the library profession that I feel precisely no connection to. - Jenica

Jenica: me either, apart from extreme gratitude for the people who are connected to it. J1ll 8: good, I don't want you getting oily fingerprints all over this thread I have to preserve. :P - Mark Kille

Preserve this. :p - Stephen Francoeur

me reed gud - John: Thread Killer

(sorry, I don't even know why I wrote that...I'll see your "cranky and restless" and raise you "punchy and nonsensical") - Stephen Francoeur

Too many inappropriate responses to even start... - Aaron the Librarian

umm... don't archivists preserve stuff? - Tom.Pasley

O.o Erm, early childhood literacy is pretty heavily entrenched in education, isn't it? Particularly for ESL learners? - Soup in a TARDIS

Errr....free access to information without having to make micropayments of personal information? Who else does that? - barbara fister

+1 barbara - Andy

Tom: Being professionally responsible for both a library and an archive has made me dubious that, professionally, librarians and archivists are doing fundamentally different things--though they certainly take different approaches. Soup: Education still hasn't reached far into 0-4 territory, I don't think. barbara: I'm not sure I'm willing to count business model as a professional distinctive. Of course, it *was* an overstatement to begin with. :) - Mark Kille

I don't actually don't understand "business model" - what does that mean in this context? - barbara fister

Well, business model is "how do you pay for what you do." A bookstore gets books from booksellers by buying them, and recoups that expense by selling books to customers. A library gets books from booksellers by buying them, and recoups that expense from tuition/endowments/taxes/grants/memberships/whatever. The library business model allows us to, for example, provide access to online information without people having to either pay for it themselves or sign in or accept cookies that collect identifying information. Instead, we pay for it, or the library's account gets used, or the library's computer gets the cookie. Technically, though, paying cash at an unfamiliar bookstore requires less personal information than using a library card to check out a book; borrowing someone's laptop at a free wi-fi hotspot would require less information than authenticating oneself to access online library resources (either remotely or locally for time-management software). In any case, "we can give you what others give you for less financial and personal cost" doesn't sound like a function to me, but a philosophy about and way to do a common function in a particularly appealing way. - Mark Kille