Samuli Kunttu

Samuli Kunttu

Samuli Kunttu has been working as an Information Specialist at Helsinki City Library’s special music and IT branch Library 10  since it’s opening in 2005. Prior to this he has worked as Reference Librarian at Helsinki City Library and as a Librarian at University of  Helsinki‘s Arts Faculty Library. Samuli Kunttu has a MA degree in Comparative Religions and Social Anthropology from the University of Helsinki and Qualified Librarian degree from the University of Oulu. Before his library career he has worked as a bartender and as a postman for several years. He has also done anthropological fieldwork in India as a Visiting Research Scholar at Ranchi University. Mr. Kunttu has held lectures and kept workshops about the future of music libraries, library 2.0 and virtual reference services both in Finland and abroad.

Do librarians need libraries anymore? ? A peek to the future

The aim of my presentation is to briefly discuss what kind of roles public librarians will take in the future and what kind of skills they will need in the future.  I will try to show how the traditional roles of catalogue librarian and reference librarian will no more be valid in public libraries, as these tasks are more and more moving into cyberspace. A vast number of new web 2.0 based tools are available to anybody today. These tools and the ubiquity of the web means that these traditional roles are actually no more limited only to professional librarians, and librarians do not necessarily need libraries to carry out these tasks.