Role

 

Journalists are not librarians. They don’t have the training. Nor are journalists archivists, which requires an entirely different kind of training to either a librarian or a journalist. When I read the headline that the Australian Broadcasting Commission will abolish 58 librarian and archivist positions, I interpret this as follows. The powers wish to further disable the delivery of quality services at the national broadcaster. The powers have no working knowledge of the work of librarians and archivists. The powers wish to live by the urban myth that digital is the future, saves on time and staff, and will provide the same service as before, at less cost. The powers have no idea of the time and work involved in describing and storing material for use via media. The powers have little or no encounter with the services they are cutting. The powers are ignorant of bibliographic description and control, a complete science that requires not just accurate description of the many aspects of any document, but the thorough description of said document according to a complex set of existing rules and guidelines. The powers are susceptible to google-think, the now dated notion that if it’s not online, it doesn’t exist. The powers are deluded enough to want to believe that a journalist can even do the work of a librarian or archivist. The powers are deluded enough to believe journalists have the time and expertise to do the work that they don’t know how to do, or are trained to do, and certainly not properly. The powers will have no plan to institute training for journalists in all the metadata specifications that are fundamental to the recording of any document or image whatsoever that a journalist must handle during the chasing of just one story. The powers have not thought that the role of a journalist suddenly includes being responsible to the future for accurate representation, in depth, of everything they use on a story; accurate for future users, who might even include the powers. The powers haven’t thought about the ramifications of any of that information if proved to be false. The powers have yet to understand that whether the work be print or digital, old or new technology, it still has to be described in the same way that librarians or archivists did the job forty years ago, before computers took over in 1995. The powers lack the imagination to see that the journalist in this arrangement will spend more time being a librarian or archivist than being a journalist; unless that is the actual and ultimate purpose of the abolition of 58 positions, namely to laden journalists with so much extra work that their real work cannot be delivered effectively.  The powers have removed a main specialist source of the journalist’s research. &c.