The Librarian and the Machine

Congratulations to Grace O'Connor from Dublin City University Library, whose blog post received a special mention in the A&SL Blog Post Competition 2026. 

The competition invited library staff and LIS students based in Ireland to submit a blog post exploring how library staff, libraries and information work are portrayed across film, television, literature, art, social media, gaming, news media or other cultural formats.

Still from Desk Set (1957), directed by Walter Lang. Courtesy of 20th Century-Fox via the Everett Collection. 

The year is 2026. You are a librarian and AI is coming for your job.

The year is 2004. You are a librarian and Google is coming for your job.
The year is 1957. You are a librarian and a computer is coming for your job.
Time is a flat circle.

In the romantic comedy Desk Set (1957), directed by Walter Lang, Katharine Hepburn plays Bunny Watson, a reference librarian in the Federal Broadcasting Network. Spencer Tracy plays the inventor of EMERAC (Electromagnetic MEmory and Research Arithmetical Calculator), a computer that could leave Bunny and her colleagues out of a job.

It is a theme familiar to anyone working in libraries. Every few years, a new technology arrives promising to make what we do obsolete. What makes Desk Set interesting is that it manages to be both a warning about technology and, ultimately, an optimistic film about it. More importantly, it is a surprisingly affectionate portrait of librarianship and information work.

“If I didn't work here I'd pay to get in”

The Reference Department in Desk Set is a wonderful place.

It is busy, chaotic and unmistakably feminine. The women shop on their lunch breaks, borrow each other's lipsticks, gossip and tease each other. There is something particularly striking about the contrast between the Reference Department and the organisation around it. Like many real-world libraries, the department is staffed predominantly by women, while the people with overall institutional power are men. At one point Bunny says, “If I didn't work here I'd pay to get in” (Desk Set, 1957).

Bunny initially looks like the classic caricature of the librarian. She is a middle-aged woman, swaddled in cardigans, pens in her hair, and she lives alone. Yet the character is not simply a joke about librarians. Bunny was loosely inspired by Agnes E. Law, a former CBS librarian who established the network's research library (AFI, 2026).

The researchers in the Reference Department aren't passive assistants waiting to be told what to do. They interpret questions, find sources and work out what people are actually asking. As Bunny puts it, “No machine can do our job. Too many cross references” (Desk Set, 1957). The wording may sound quaint now, but the underlying point remains relevant: a reference question is rarely just about retrieving a fact. It requires understanding the question, recognising what the person actually needs, knowing where to look and judging whether the answer makes sense.

Bunny's expertise is accumulated through experience. She knows the organisation, the collection, her colleagues and the people asking the questions. That type of on-the-job learning and real life experience is difficult to automate.

Still from Desk Set (1957, directed by Walter Lang. Courtesy of 20th Century-Fox via IMDB.

The next machine

The computer wasn't the last technology to threaten librarianship.

By 2004, the threat looked rather different. Google was rapidly transforming how people searched for information. A D-Lib Magazine editorial from Bonita Wilson that year noted that anyone could now “type a few words into a Google search bar” and receive thousands of information sources ranked by Google's algorithms. It acknowledged that professional searchers, including reference librarians, might be tempted to worry about this development (Wilson, 2004).

As we know, Google did not make librarians obsolete. The work changed, libraries adapted to the new technology and learned to use it effectively, so it enhanced the work rather than replacing it.

And this is where the comparison between Desk Set and real-world librarianship becomes interesting. The film's stereotype of the librarian as a woman who knows where to find information may now seem dated. But its portrayal of the librarian as an expert, adaptable information professional has aged surprisingly well.

People and machines

Now we have AI.

AI can spit out references, facts, and even whole essays faster than any librarian could. It can answer questions in seconds and produce convincing-looking responses without requiring the user to understand how the information was found.

That makes the question asked in Desk Set feel remarkably contemporary: what happens to the librarian when the machine can do the searching?

Still from Desk Set (1957), directed by Walter Lang. Courtesy of 20th Century-Fox via IMDB.

The answer may lie in what librarians have always done when technology changes.

The profession has survived the card catalogue, the photocopier, the personal computer, the internet and Google. Some technologies have eliminated tasks. Some have changed the skills librarians need. But none has eliminated the underlying need for people who can evaluate information, understand context, exercise professional judgement and respond to what their communities actually need.

Desk Set does not challenge every stereotype about librarians. But it does challenge one of the most persistent stories told about the profession: that when a machine can perform one of our tasks, the librarian becomes obsolete.

EMERAC doesn't destroy the Reference Department. The librarians remain, and (spoiler alert) the machine becomes part of their workplace rather than the end of it.

Perhaps the real lesson of Desk Set is not that librarians will always beat the machines. It is that librarians have always been very good at finding a way to use them.

Time is a flat circle, after all.

Reference List

American Film Institute (2026) AFI Catalog. Available at: https://catalog.afi.com/Film/52153-DESK-SET (Accessed: 28/08/2026).

Desk Set (1957) Directed by Walter Lang. [Feature film]. 20th Century Fox.

Wilson, B. (2004) 'Using the Internet for Searching', D-Lib Magazine, 10(3), Available at: https://www.dlib.org/dlib/march04/03editorial.html (Accessed: 30/08/2024).

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Libfocus Link-out for September 2026

Welcome to the September edition of the Libfocus link-out, an assemblage of library-related things we have found informative, educational, thought-provoking and insightful on the Web over the past while.

[image: Kadumago, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons]

The Next Chapter of Open Access Is Stewardship.
Kamran Naim argues in the Katina Magazine that the next chapter of the Open Access movement is about accepting collective responsibility for the infrastructures that make openness sustainable over the long term.

The Politics of Academic Libraries: Why Librarians Need a Seat at the Decision-Making Table.
Librarian Onyebuchi Ekpolomo recommends on LinkedIn that libraries do not shy away from “politics” and get a seat at the table where it matters.

Libraries and museums should have books, not artificial intelligence.
This opinion piece questions the growing use of AI in museums and libraries, arguing that technology should support, not overshadow, the books, collections and historical evidence at the heart of cultural institutions.

How one library built an Intranet that Staff actually use.
Too many emails, scattered information and disconnected teams are familiar challenges for many libraries. This article looks at how Lake Villa District Library built a staff hub that became a trusted source of information while strengthening workplace culture and collaboration.

Back to school in the age of AI.
Elissa Malespina discusses tools to help guide the conversation about the use of AI among students as the new academic term begins.

Ten simple rules for scholarly blogging.
Catharina Ochsner, Heinz Pampel and Martin Fenner offer practical guidance for those who wish to adopt blogging as a form of scholarly communication.

We’re Using Harvard’s Libraries Wrong.
In this opinion piece for The Harvard Crimson, Emily X. Yu advises students to draw on the expertise of librarians, rather than on AI, when doing their research.

Need a Gun Lock? Ask Your Local Librarian.
Chip Brownlee looks at an initiative in Baltimore that promotes safer firearm storage in this article for The Trace. Johns Hopkins has partnered with Baltimore’s public library system for the project, with the aim to prevent homicide, unintentional injuries, suicide and theft.

Oxford and Springer Nature Update AI Journal Guidelines.
On the back of a global survey of more than 2,600 researchers on AI disclosure practices and policies, OUP updated its guidelines on AI use for authors and editors. It includes what AI use should be disclosed when preparing manuscripts for OUP journals.

A Groupthink We Don’t Talk Much About.
Irving Janis, the Yale psychologist who developed the theory of groupthink from studying foreign policy disasters, found that the groups most vulnerable to it weren’t the incompetent ones. Neil Blair Christensen wonders if the scholarly publishing community are one of those groups.

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Why We Still Need Librarians and DJs in the Age of the Algorithm

In 2015, I wrote a post for Libfocus called Librarians are a lot like DJs. My argument was straightforward enough. Librarians and DJs are both curators. We sort through vast amounts of material, identify what we think has value, and connect people with resources they may never have discovered otherwise. Whether the medium happens to be books, journal articles, archives, podcasts or records, the underlying principle remains much the same. We help people navigate abundance.  

More than a decade later, I find myself returning to that idea, not just as a librarian writing about DJs, but as someone who unexpectedly became a college radio DJ on UCC983FM shortly after I wrote that post.  

Next week, on 10 September, I will start presenting a new show, The Thursday Mixtape, on UCC 98.3FM every Thursday evening from 6pm to 8pm. The programme will also be available afterwards through Mixcloud for anyone who misses the live broadcast and wants to listen back.  

As I've been planning the show, choosing music, and thinking about what I want the show to be, I have found myself reflecting on that 2015 article and wondering whether its central argument might actually be more relevant today than it was then.  

When I wrote that original piece, streaming was already well established. Spotify had been around for a number of years and services such as Deezer and Google Play Music were gaining traction. What has changed since then is the extent to which recommendation algorithms have become the primary means through which many people discover music.  

There is no question that these systems provide value. Most of us have probably experienced the pleasure of finding a new artist through a playlist or radio station generated by a streaming platform. The technology is impressive, and the convenience is undeniable. We have access to more music than any previous generation could ever have imagined.  

Yet I sometimes wonder whether abundance has created a different problem.  

When almost everything is available, how do we decide what deserves our attention?  

The traditional answer was often a trusted intermediary. For previous generations that might have been a local record shop owner, a music journalist, a friend with impeccable taste, or a radio DJ. They performed a filtering function. They listened to lots of music so that we did not have to. They developed informed opinions, championed obscure artists, and occasionally took risks on music that had no obvious commercial appeal.  

The important point is that these recommendations came from people rather than processes.  

Algorithms are remarkably effective at identifying patterns in our existing behaviour. They are good at telling us what listeners with similar habits have also enjoyed. What they typically cannot explain is why a particular piece of music matters to someone. They cannot tell stories. They cannot communicate enthusiasm. They cannot share the emotional connection that often sits behind a recommendation.  

A human curator can and does.  

This is one of the ideas behind The Thursday Mixtape. It would be misleading to describe it as a carefully structured programme. In truth, listeners may find it somewhat chaotic. There is no grand curatorial framework. There are no strict rules. There often will not be an obvious connection between successive tracks.  

You might hear a post-punk classic followed by contemporary folk or cheesy pop single. An electronic track might give way to Americana or classical. Shoegaze could sit beside soul or Chinese throat singing. Indie rock may be followed by new wave, classic rock, jazz, disco or something that fits comfortably into none of those categories.  

From a programming perspective, this may seem slightly reckless.  

The only principle guiding the selection is that I like the songs or music I'm going to play and think it is worth sharing.  

That may sound simplistic, but I would argue that this has always been one of the strengths of good radio. Many of the great DJs were not successful because they adhered rigidly to genre boundaries. They were successful because listeners trusted their judgement. People tuned in not necessarily because they knew what was coming next, but because they didn't.  

That element of surprise mattered greatly to me in my formative music days and I’m hoping to bring some of that to the show. 

This is increasingly rare in an environment where recommendation systems are designed to minimise friction and maximise user engagement. The logic of these systems often nudges us towards music that resembles what we have already heard. As a result, listening can become a highly personalised but sometimes surprisingly narrow, and I would say a lesser, experience.  

Radio, at its best, offers something different.  

It introduces randomness. It introduces risk. It creates opportunities for serendipitous discovery. It exposes listeners to music they might otherwise skip past or never encounter at all.  

As librarians, we understand the value of this process. Libraries are not simply warehouses of information. They are spaces of discovery. A good library catalogue can help users locate material efficiently, but the most memorable discoveries often occur through recommendation, browsing or conversation. Sometimes the book or article that changes your perspective or research is not the one you were searching for. It is the one somebody suggested, displayed, or happened to place in your path.  

Music works in much the same way.  

Back in 2015, I argued that we needed librarians because we were drowning in information and choice. I also suggested that we needed DJs because we were drowning in music. Eleven years later, I think both observations remain true and even more so now. 

The technologies have become more sophisticated. Our access to content has expanded beyond anything we could have imagined. Yet the need for informed, passionate, human recommendation has not disappeared.  

If anything, it has become more important. It is now essential. 

The Thursday Mixtape is a small attempt to contribute to that tradition. For two hours every Thursday evening, I will be sharing songs that I think deserve to be heard. There may be no obvious logic to the sequence. There may be no overarching theme. There may be moments when the playlist appears to have wandered completely off course in to a strange bizarre listening world.  

But that is the point.  

Discovery has always been a little messy.  

And sometimes the best recommendations come not from an algorithm that knows exactly what we want, but from another human being who simply says: "Listen to this." 

 

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Libfocus Link-out for August 2026

Welcome to the August edition of the Libfocus link-out, an assemblage of library-related things we have found informative, educational, thought-provoking and insightful on the Web over the past while.

 
As Gov. Healey weighs library bill, readers say: let librarians decide.
In this article for Boston.com, Annie Jonas looks at bill S.2696, which is under consideration by the Governor of Massachusetts this month. The bill would give librarians more power to choose and display books and make it more difficult for books to be pulled from the shelves. Crucially, it would also protect librarians from being penalised due to their collection decisions.

Their Library feature in Clash Magazine.
Ever wondered about the literary influences behind the music? Well look no further than the 'their library' feature in Clash Magazine. Add some strange, funny and inspiring titles to your TBR list with recommendations from NYC group Slow Fiction, Nell Mescal, Neil Hannon from the Divine Comedy and more.

Refusal as Instruction: Equipping Patrons to Resist AI, Data Brokers, Big Tech, & More.
A journal article by Hannah Cyrus on technology refusal classes she runs at her library, including
‘Avoiding AI’. Cyrus advocates that libraries as values-driven organizations have a role to play in
facilitating patrons’ rejection of technology, just as much as in their adoption of it.

Pat Donlon obituary: First woman director of a national institution, librarian and academic.
Following the passing of Pat Donlon, the Irish Times looks back on her life as the first woman Director of a national institution, librarian, and her part as one of a remarkable generation of Irish women who were among the first in their families to attend university in the 1960s.

Rethinking Rankings: A Moral Ambition?
Lizzie Gadd examines in her article in the Bibliomagician global university rankings through the lens of meaningful social change. She applies the historian’s Rutger Bregman’s six warning signs that a common practice may be wrong to shortcomings of university rankings.

Reimagining openness in academic libraries: Reflections from ALN conference 2026.
Open Research Librarian Abi Harrison-Henshall and Open Research Specialist Dr Sarah Kneen from the University of Manchester report on the Academic Libraries North 2026 Conference, which asked participants to think beyond Open Access as simply making research free to read. This summary piece raises some important questions currently being discussed in research libraries.

A ‘bananas’ order for 5,000 obscure titles from a bookshop in Galway fuels suspicion.
A wave of mystery bulk book purchases is puzzling European booksellers, with many suspecting the titles are being bought for AI training rather than readers. The trend raises concerns about copyright, publishing ethics, and AI's impact on the book industry.

‘More real than anything you’ll see scrolling’: the radical resurgence of UK fanzines, 50 years after punk.
Fifty years after punk zines like Sniffin’ Glue, DIY music fanzines are enjoying a revival across the UK as fans seek a more personal, tangible alternative to algorithm-driven online culture. From Glasgow to Belfast, creators are using self-published magazines to build communities, document local music scenes and celebrate independent voices.

6 reasons libraries should look beyond the MLS.
Bryn Geffert argues that MLS requirements hinder academic libraries and instead calls for recognising alternative credentials and interdisciplinary expertise in recruitment.

The case for a professional foundation in librarianship.
Responding to Bryn Geffert, Bobbi Newman and Sam Helmick counter that the Master of Library Science and professionally trained librarians remain more essential than ever.

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Artist Una Watters and the Cost of the Marriage Bar on Irish Libraries

Article by Libfocus guest author Holly Meade-Kennedy. Holly works within the Irish academic library sector and is passionate about social justice and EDI. 

During a recent trip to the National Gallery of Ireland, I paused as I walked by a striking painting of a woman walking in the rain, holding an umbrella in front of Trinity College. As I began to read the short blurb that accompanied it, I learned it had been painted by Una Watters, an Irish librarian and artist. ‘Una was forced to retire from her post as a librarian due to the Irish marriage bar in 1945,’ it explained. 

The Irish marriage bar was introduced in the 1920s, requiring female civil service workers to retire from employment once they married (Foley, 2022), anchored by a bedrock of deep enmeshment between religious and civil life. It grew into a pervasive cultural norm across banks, primary teaching, local health boards and the private sector until the civil service requirement was ultimately revoked in 1973.

Before I had even made it home that evening, I began furiously Googling Una Watters. As a teacher currently working in an academic library, I felt acutely aware that it could have been my career that needed to be sacrificed, had I been born just a few decades earlier. I had thought I had stumbled upon a famous painter I had somehow never heard of, expecting to find hundreds of articles, possibly some podcasts and certainly listings of other exhibitions where I could see more of her work. In reality, the results were frustratingly sparse. While a few online articles documented Una’s life, they fell far short of the extensive record an artist of her talent deserves. 

Image from Pexels.com

Yet even with an academic library catalogue at my fingertips, the search results were starkly blank: a frustrating reminder that collective memory often fails some of the most talented and brilliant women. But who better to be tasked with finding information buried deeply than those of us who work in libraries? In the Avengers universe, this is my form of superpower.

Born Una McDonnell in 1918, she grew up in Finglas and entered Dublin’s public library service in the late 1930s. Dual identity seems to be a theme of Una’s life, as by day she was a library clerk working in the Capel Street and Phibsborough branches, and by night she was a student at the National College of Art and Design. Due to ill health, she never had the chance to complete her studies, but clearly what she had learned and the innate talent she possessed was more than enough to allow her to create some incredible works of art.

In 1945, Una was forced to resign from her job as a librarian when she met her husband Eugene Watters. Looking back, we can clearly identify the devastating historical drain of female intellect and institutional memory the marriage bar caused within Irish libraries. Our profession missed out on intelligent, creative, interesting women, like Una, who had so much to give. It should give us pause to consider just how different our libraries and public services might look today without the enforcement of the marriage bar.

Think, for instance, of Henriette Avram, who invented machine-readable cataloguing (MARC) in the 1960s. This became the international language of information, allowing libraries anywhere in the world to instantly share cataloguing data, paving the way for the automation of libraries and setting the stage for the modern internet search systems we use today. Without Henriette Avram, the global library network as we know it today would not exist. If Henriette had been a married woman in Ireland, the world may not have MARC records today. How many Irish Henriette Avrams did we legally cast aside? What standard, what system or what creative breakthrough did Irish libraries lose forever simply because a brilliant woman decided to get married?

Though the State took her library job, it couldn’t strip away her archivist’s instinct, and Una found a new way to catalogue history. With her free time, Una created incredible works of art with a unique modernist style, using elements of Cubism and Futurism to depict figures in interesting, angular forms. She used her art to document social change in paintings like Cappagh Road (1960). This painting documents a vanished era when community life was lived out on the street. It captures a time when neighbours congregated on corners without phones to distract them from conversing with one another and the local shop was the true centre point of the estate.

Una’s untimely death occurred in 1965 when she was just 47 years old, and Eugene subsequently gifted her paintings to family and friends. It was that same year Una had won an Arts Council competition to design the official emblem for the 1916 Rising Golden Jubilee, known as the Sword of Light. The logo was used on badges, stamps and even Dublin buses. The £100 prize cheque arrived in the post on the morning of Una’s funeral, once again symbolising that Una’s life was sadly marked by an undeserved series of ‘almosts’.

Because Una’s work was hung in the dining rooms and kitchens of her loved ones around Ireland, she was eclipsed from Irish public memory. However, in 2022, Una’s niece Sheila Smith endeavoured to become a new keeper of her memory. Using the 1966 catalogue from the memorial exhibition Eugene had held in her honour before dispersing her paintings, Sheila, partnering with writer Mary Morrissy, began tracking down the missing canvases. They ultimately located most of her original 37 paintings, culminating in the 2022 retrospective exhibition in Dublin’s United Arts Club aptly titled ‘Una Watters: Into the Light’.
Serendipitously, one place where her work remained visible to the public throughout that time was Phibsborough Library where Una had once worked. She had gifted her painting ‘The Four Masters’ to the library in 1959. There is a profound irony here: a woman whose own legacy faded into the shadows had painted a masterpiece celebrating the Franciscan friars who were the ultimate keepers of Irish memory. Una left a physical anchor of her talent in the custody of information-keepers, ensuring that the library would guard her memory until we were ready to discover it again.

Una’s story brings to mind the many women who stayed in the shadows, with their genius and creativity halted because of restrictions like the Irish Marriage Bar. Librarians have the skills and passion to discover, share and celebrate information and stories that were once forgotten or even buried. Our priority must be to champion those who have been pushed to the margins or left off the shelves entirely.

References:

Foley, D. (2022). ‘Their proper place’: women, work and the marriage bar in independent Ireland, c. 1924–1973. Social History, 47(1), 60–84. https://doi.org/10.1080/03071022.2022.2009692
Mary Morrissy ‘Una Watters Publications’ 2022 https://unawattersartist.com/publications/ 

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Janeway 1.8 & 1.9 Showcase

Janeway'll be hosting a showcase of the new features introduced in Janeway 1.8 and 1.9 soon, to which you are all invited.

 

 

When: Wednesday 26 August, 15:30–16:30 (UK time)
Where: Microsoft Teams — link below.

 

Join: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/397743722693089?p=zFlqBcWf4TAdEv87cS
Meeting ID: 397 743 722 693 089
Passcode: Xo2k6zQ6

This session is particularly aimed at press managers and editors, as several of the changes affect journal and press configuration, contact handling, and styling -- but anyone is welcome.

Highlights include:

• A new Accessibility page for journals and presses (not repositories), including:
  • A living VPAT
  • The ability to add or link your own accessibility statement at journal or press level
• Alt text support
• Content management system draft/published settings, and how these relate to sitemaps, and the WCAG "Multiple Ways" success criterion
• Discontinuation of the OLH, Material, and Clean themes, with a move to the Clarity theme
• New contact manager
• Large images are not pixellated or skewed any more
  • You can control journal publishing status, including a "test" status

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