I have stayed out of the thread of this conversation because I straddle the fence being both a librarian and an archivist (who collects manuscripts, rare books, etc. in exactly the same way that a museum curator develops and catalogs artifact collections....the extent of my collection is a direct result of my own goals, initiatives...and support is in direct contrast to the number of users, researchers, fund-raising, etc.). Anyway, there was a comment that librarians sort and categorize information but do not create it. That is a statement that I strongly disagree on. In many libraries, librarians are actually creating information. They research and create in-house databases or compendiums that may be unavailable anywhere else. Some of these databases may indeed be lists of information....albeit NEW lists....other databases are compilations of new knowledge gathered from a variety of sources. For example, here we have created and maintain a BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WEST FLORIDA. Begin in 1968, the Bibliography is a listing of every item that we can find that has been published about the West Florida region....books, journal articles, government publications (Federal, State, Local), dissertations, newspapers, periodicals, Supreme Court opinions....anything if it has been printed or promulgated. Each listing (arranged by date of publication and then sequentially, e.g. 1993-107, 1993-108) is accompanied also by an annotation giving further information. For example, we might list a 1920 history of a particular county---now the original book did not have a personal name index, but we have created one and list it as the annotation. Further, in addition to the sequential listing of the Bibliography, it is accompanied by a massive index to these entries. At the present time, the Bibliography exists as 8 volumes or groups; coverage is from the year 1535 up to 1994. In addition, most of the materials listed are then kept by this Department in file cabinets arranged by the BWF number....unless they are books or government documents or maps, and these are elsewhere in the collection. Four volumes have been published (we printed and bound 150 sets in 1981), and four volumes exist in electronic form (with several printed editions). If a new publication of some kind comes to our attention, I shall endeavor to obtain a copy (purchase, solicitation, etc.) and try to learn everything about it. Because many of the items in the BWF are regional or local, there is NO other source for this information except the writers, publishers, and agencies themselves. That, as every museum curator knows, is fieldwork. Archaeologists are among our heavy users of the BWF because in one database, we have synthesized the information. Otherwise the researcher would have to try hundreds of indexes and databases to see if a journal article has been published (assuming that the particular article or journal is indexed in THAT index or database), check separate sources for dissertations, totally miss a history of a company or genealogy of a family cited as part of a Florida Supreme Court case because these are cited as 'Smith vs. Jones' and don't tell you that they may concern the probate of the will of George Ohr and his pottery works in Biloxi by a married daughter, Miss X Smith....and so on. My institution is NOT alone in creating these new tools or information sources....many libraries have similar projects on a variety of subjects. So to pigeonhole libraries as simple sorters and filers of information is a great discredit. Dean DeBolt, University Librarian Special Collections and West Florida Archives University of West Florida, Pensacola E-mail: [log in to unmask] Phone: 904-474-2213 Fax: 904-474-3128