Mobile devices change the way medicine is taught, learned and practiced. That’s a great challenge for libraries

The papers in this special issue on mobile technologies have one thing in common. They all agree that “smartphones and tablet computers have become the new cultural ‘norm’ within personal and professional lives” (Fuller & Joynes). Especially tablets are used to enhance teaching, learning and practice of medicine.As you learn in this issue, some European medical schools have already recognized the value of tablet computers in learning and loan them or present them as a gift to students. Six from eight contributions regard tablets, which reflects pretty much the use we all recognize in lectures, libraries, on the ward, on the go

Students are a source of inspiration for the library

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Emerging challenges. Last resort for trustworthy librarians

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The Librarian of the Future

Who do you think “Librarians of the Future” are? How would they behave and what would they look like? In my imagination they are like a space hero, a Flash Gordon-like figure with almost magical cyber librarian skills nobody ever has heard of. But hold on – many of us practice such skills already. Every time I listen to some of my colleagues from abroad I’m deeply astonished about the diversity of tasks they perform, the services they have invented, and the kind of non genuine library task they manage. (Maybe that’s the reason why every year I’m more content to be a librarian, and I cannot imagine a more powerful and amazing work.) Let me demonstrate some of the tasks and skills that I have come across

No student has to come to the library anymore

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Watch Repairer, Taxi Driver, Librarian: How threatened are our jobs in the digital age?

For 702 different jobs, the Oxford researchers Frey and Osborne examined the degree of susceptibility to computerisation. With a probability of 65%, the occupation “librarian” was calculated as quite good computerisable (1). How does this translates into the reality of our daily work? Do we now all have to be anxious for our jobs? Fearing that our jobs will get lost? That libraries get extinct