I’ve been working in libraries since the early 1990s, acquiring my MLS in 1998. I have never seen a position eliminated due to the Internet. Instead the Internet has caused a shift in workflow, and usually additional job duties for those already employed. If anything, the Internet has *created* positions, like my own digital services job. On the other hand, I have seen widespread budget cuts over the years resulting in hiring freezes, and (most insidiously) positions left unfilled when employees quit or retire. I would have thought the decline in positions could be directly traced back to the decline in funding.

Of course, a lot of people seem to think librarians have become extraneous due to the proliferation of information on the Internet. That makes it easier to justify cutting our funding. So maybe in a roundabout way the Internet is responsible, but that was not the implication in the article.

It stuck in my mind in library school that ALA was founded the year of the US Centennial. Also Bell patented the telephone and Dewey published his classification system. Librarians, information technology, and organization of information.