What can I do to improve patrons' lives?

Al Franken was sworn in this week as Minnesota's junior senator, many months after the election. In his remarks after taking the oath of office, he said (quoting the late Paull Wellstone) that he's going to "wake up every day saying, 'what can I do to improve people's lives?' " As I librarian, I find that very inspiring. Here's why.

At my institution, we are intensively weeding the print reference collection, to remove resources that are no longer relevant. The web has changed how students and faculty do research, and it has changed the kinds of questions we get as reference librarians. Statistics in books? If they can't download them, they don't want them. Quotations? They look on the web. Big encyclopedias? Why come in to look at books - the library may not even be open when they're doing their research.

We acquire online databases, and monographs - to the point that we don't exactly know what "reference" works we have right now. The print reference collection was a collaborative effort, librarians working together to recommend titles, including titles not in their subject areas. The online collection is often developed in a vacuum, or at least done solo - fewer discussions on how this fits into the greater collection, or gaps we see in others' subjects. I feel sad to see the old collections going away, even as I know it's part of modern reference work.

Then I hear a quote like Franken's, reminding me that my job, the reference librarian's job, is to improve patrons' lives. To help them find their stuff. The patrons are online, so we need to make sure they find their stuff online. Some will continue to use print, or need to use print for their disciplines or topics, but we need to have the stuff online. And we need to know what we have online, so that we can connect patrons with it. One of Ranganathan's laws of library science is "every reader his (or her) book." Which today might be "every researcher his/her source," be it online or print, pdf or html or ILL or paper. And I wonder if I can live up to the call of waking up every day, thinking about how I can improve patrons' lives. I'll try.