Relevance of academic reference librarians

[deborah]

I've got some thoughts I've been pondering about some problems which are probably specific to academic reference librarianship, although I may be incorrect about that. I've been formulating these ideas for a while (with much help from cnoocy and tahnan), and I'm just going to brainstorm some ideas onto the page. Because there's a lot here, and going to break this up into multiple posts. I'm partly during this just organize my thoughts, but I would love to hear input and feedback from y'all. Am I oversimplifying, missing things, over complicating? Are these solved problems?

The question is one of relevance. What purpose does a reference librarian serve in an era of:

1. Openly available materials (reference materials on the open Web)
2. Ease of self-service
3. A perception of an absolute necessity for instantaneous gratification

Continued at openly available materials.