Librarians still love books, and for a long time they have also loved other media, such as sound recordings, maps, musical scores, films, and video. But it would be even truer to say they love bringing works of all sorts to their patrons, either by organizing and displaying copies or through personal assistance. These days they also love microcomputers and telecommunications--new tools that can be put in the service of their traditional roles. Consider:

Librarians were one of the earliest professional groups to embrace Internet technology in large numbers. There is now an armada of library catalogs on the Internet, including those of the Free Library of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania. Librarians are among the most active users of electronic reference works and discussion lists. They run hundreds of World Wide Web sites. Through telecommunications, librarians contribute to and routinely use one of the largest databases in the world, the OCLC union catalog in Dublin, Ohio. Its 30 million records of books and other media reflect the holdings of more than 6,000 libraries, U.S. and foreign.

Librarians are trained in sophisticated information retrieval techniques. They search industrial-strength databases such as those offered by Dialog Information Services and Lexis/Nexis. These are often thought to daunt untrained users, but librarians revel in them.