Move over NYT, this week's article is coming in hot from the Hedgehog Review. In his piece, "The Department of Everything," Stephen Akey, a former librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library in the 80s, takes us into the underbelly of the "Telephone Reference Division" aka the people you called when you had a question aka the Google of yesteryear. He and his team (led by a boss who ruled with a "3 citation per answer" fist) had a strict no-judgement policy and helped everyone from "game show aspirants to police detectives" find the facts. This all got us thinking 1. Will thinking like a librarian (i.e. being an expert in how to find and piece facts together) save us in a world of AI? 2. What are we missing out on in a world where we can get any answer we want to hear without hearing from a human at all?
Check out the article here: https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-varieties-of-travel-experience/articles/the-department-of-everything
