to the ultimate dream currently being promulgated by local councils throughout the UK of getting rid of those pesky books altogether

Mines the one with orange hair on it....

You ask 'em for help. That's it. There's no "book-stamping" - you *always* checkout your book with a "chip ' n' pin" (God I hate that experession) library card, or Oulu City card, and a barcode reader. Fast, and a doddle. Unless you're old*, in which case the Audience Development Officers.....

...

(Sorry, just went for a quick puke)

.....will take care of it for you.

*or stupid, in which case you must be trying to nick books for the Sally Army. 'cept, they don't pay. Then you get enhanced unemployment benefit, cos that's sufficient evidence that you must be a mush-head.

Libraries are seriously at risk of becoming little more than providers of free internet access. Which means rather than a problem of staff nomenclature, we'll end up with the problem of no real librarians and no real libraries. Books? Pah! That's so last millennial!

Who elects these twunts into a council anyway? How on earth do they get away with such poo.

“There will always be an appropriate level of staffing in libraries."

One would always hope that there'll be sufficient staff to do the job...

Any staff freed up by self-service will be used across an expanded, more customer-focused library service for Edinburgh.”

One would always hope the customer comes first...

FFS can we not get rid of these troublesome clowns.

It's more a case of Confusocracy. Quite what the purpose is here is unclear - one could think of many reasons both good and bad, no, actually all bad:

Someone is getting paid to come up with job titles.

The head librarian thought Head of Audience Development was a cooler job title.

Some overpaid eejit with the title "Equality Officer" or similar thought up the wheeze as the title "Librarian" was demeaning.

Obfuscation of stats - Audience Development Officers will appear at a different point in any list of employees, thus making year-on-year comparison difficult (I'm suspecting this is the REAL reason given that you mention 40 may be in for the chop)

I'm a regular user of the Edinburgh libraries, I'm a computer industry professional, and I have trouble using those damn self-service machines :-) so I dread to think how others get on with them. One can manage them with persistence but really it's a lot easier to get the librarian to do it for you. Just as with those self-scanners the supermarkets tried a few years ago - nobody could be bothered with the extra hassle so they died a death. Same here.

They have to spend that budget by the end of the fiscal year otherwise it'll be downsized next year, so why not spend lots of money on literature renaming librarians, it's not more barmy than half of the other tosh councils come out with.

Ook.

'Audience Development Officer' would be a great 'official' title for a porn star. After all, they develop their audiences to [a] climax.

Could equally be applied to Prophets. "He's not an Audience Development Officer, he's just a very naughy boy"

Hint to our younger generation and anybody seeking a Job

If you find the Term "Librarian" Offensive Don't get a job as one !!!!

Jeez !

If you want to make people redundant, you redefine the job role, declare that there are less "new" jobs available than before, and make everyone apply for the new jobs. Then you can select the ones you want to keep and tell the rest that their job no longer exists within the new structure.

They are 'Long-Term Physical Recordings of Individual Learning And Discovery' (non-fiction) and 'Long-Term Physical Recordings of Free-Associated Thoughts Ordered In Such A Way As To Convey Entertainment' (fiction) - and don't you forget it!

the peeps in subway that make the subs are called "sandwich artists" *scoff* have you seen most of the handywork? lol no love whatsoever

You mean those self-scanner machines that are in every major supermarket round here?

I just wanted to borrow ...

I CAN'T HEAR YOU

I Just Wanted To...

I CAN'T HEAR YOU

Sir, I Just Wanted To Borrow A Physics Book, Sir.

AISLE 3; SECOND ROW UP

Aye-Aye, Sir

((( friggin civillians)))

Bloody librarians - peddling free books to the unwashed. Only Google and bloody skiving eggheads need books to show off with. Turn libraries into adult video stores and brothels is what I say and give the people what they want. And no bloody development either, bloody toffs thinking we ain't good enough for 'em. Audience gratification is what we want.

(Paris never set foot in a bloody library in her life, and she's what the public wants...)

WTF?

A Librarian is a professional qualification. Most Library's only have one or two Librarians and the rest are just book stampers or as we like to call them Library Assistants.

So what is the big problem.......? Change their job title to 'audience development officers' then you can give the job to any clown that thinks all they do is stamp books. Then they will dole out endless copies of Harry Potter or whichever book is most topical this month. We as a society should have access to all available knowledge not just what trash sells

A Librarian is the guardian of knowledge. They decide which books your children should read, not the government, not the schools and certainly not the church. They ensure the publics' right to good/accurate and unbiased information is available and free to all.

When the Taliban took over Afghanistan the first thing they did was close the Library's. Control a society's access to information and you can control their thoughts and aspirations.

How many people read a book when they were young and through I would love to be a racing car driver or solve a mystery or take a golden ring to Mordor? Books are about raising people expectations and teaching them what can be achieved when they try. Librarians' are the guardians of your right to free information (books).

Believe it or not Google does not have all the answers. And when Phorm rolls out your access to information will be watched and reported back to Wacky Jaqui

So this isn't political correctness it's an attack on our society's ability to access information and an attempt to save money. Any fool can publish on the internet. But books are the sum of societies acquired knowledge. I for one would hate to lose Librarians as I believe they are so important to our society………Oh and I'm married to one of them as well

Yep, I agree there. Libraries here (Finland) generally have plenty of staff, even in quite small towns like where I live, but they all have (and have had for quite some time) an array of self-service machines - some for taking books out, and others for returning books. It all works quite well, librarians are still called librarians, and I don't think there's any risk of industrial action over the 'rise of the machines'. You just use your card to scan the book in and out, and you can renew it over the internet. Of course, that fits with the Finnish mindset of "let's pretend the other people don't exist, and try not to interact with them"...

Apparently they (I really don't know who "they" is tbh, but anyway) decided that librarians deal with a lot more than books these days, and rather than just sort of update the word "librarian" to connotate more than book lender/fine collector, they had to relabel them "library media specialists". Sadly, unlike their Edinburgh counterparts, I know a lot of the librarians here embraced the new terminology with open arms.

I don't know if the self-scan machines are different for you, but the ones in my local Asda were designed by Satan.

I love change, but when I've stretched 4 feet to my left to put the money in it is just plain evil to have the coins come out next to where you've put money in and the notes come out next to the right thigh.

Good GOD, man... Don't you realize you're trampling on my favorite porn fantasy???

If there are no more librarians, whatever will I fantasize about? Bookstore clerks???

What a sad day in Western Civilization...

... of not going shopping often enough in Tesco or Asda, obviously; I'd forgotten that they'd resurrected self service scanners in a new form. Thanks to several people for pointing that out. Doesn't change the fact that the Embra library scanners are more hassle and more slow than the Audience Development Officers though.

Microcephalic Autocoprophagic Designator

Presence of phrase 'freed up' = sure sign, morons at work.

Yup. Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt (eventually). My local Tesco insists that any item to be weighed must be on the scales before selecting the item. That 's counter-intuitive to me. I had the bag thing on the 10 items or less checkouts so I gave up on those. I did persist with the other checkouts for a while, but it's quicker and easier to used the staffed tills as I can pack while they scan. Also I go early on a Friday so I like to chat to other people in the queue or have a joke with the staff. (I think working from home is driving me a little batty.)

Fortunately our libraries are still called libraries and long may it continue. My bugbear is the amount of shelf space dedicated to foreign language books. There's more shelf space dedicated to Chinese language than there is to my favourite genres (fantasy, sci-fi and trains, obviously). Not to mention the various Indian languages, far eastern languages, Polish, etc. Just what is the Vietnamese population of Coventry?

I'll get me anorak.

We'll call developmentally retarded children "retarded", we'll use the verb "to fuck", and (gasp!) we'll call librarians "librarians". The adjectives "good", "bad", and "fucking awful" ("bloody awful" in the UK & colonies) will be deployed with regularity, as well asthe pejorative word "stupid".

This kind of nonsense always amuses me: some brain dead functionary thinks that changing "what we call it" makes "it" better. Or conjures up some imaginary scenario in which someone (just who is never specified) is "offended" or something is "inappropriate" and thereby justifies re-rigging the language.

It's true that libraries have changed, but they've been changing for a long time yet were still always called libraries. From the clay tablets of Babylonia to the papyrus scrolls of Alexandria to the hand written codices chained to the shelves of medieval Europe right through to modern libraries full of cheap editions of bodice rippers and DVDs of practical sex techniques: they were/are all still libraries.

And the professionals who run them are librarians.

I swear there's a secret committee for embuggering the Queen's; people who proactively maintain this customer-facing focus farce, in opposition to common sense use of language. Is it a means to justify their HR ends?

Perhaps yon cooncil will take a window of opportunity to deploy infomercials explaining this innovative rebranding. I say a corporate anthem's next !

One would always hope the customer comes first...

I should hope..... the more, the better.

@Dennis - "When the Taliban took over Afghanistan the first thing they did was close the Library's. Control a society's access to information and you can control their thoughts and aspirations."

And they're still murdering teachers, doctors, and students. This is the formula for every mindless dicator, power-mad group, nutjob. Kill off the teachers, doctors, intellectuals

who might pass on an "idea" into some innocent.

Paris, because she isn't.