A lot has been said about the importance of libraries in offering the human factor. We're not just empty search boxes or impersonal Web sites. We provide services with knowledgeable people you can talk to, explore a question with, look right in the eye. We offer the human factor.

There's an important element of truth to this, but it's a diminishing truth. As social networking tools become a prominent means of communication for library users, and as remote use of the library grows, we need to rethink our pride. Or, put another way, we need to come up with strategies for enhancing our success with the human factor in online spaces. Ask students if they consider Google to be impersonal. Ask them if they find MySpace, Flickr and blogs to be lacking in human interaction. Ask them why they ever use IM to talk to their friends rather than give them a call.

Reference librarians are often held up as a gold standard of the human factor in libraries. Having spent my early professional years at the reference desk, and having done a brief stint again last year, I've seen first-hand the importance of being there, in person, for the users who need us. That is, for the users who need us and are also in the library. We also do a fine job with phone and e-mail reference.

A side note: It has occurred to me that we're personable only up to a point. In my library, as well as in others, the reference librarians won't wear name tags because they're afraid of being harassed or stalked. So they are cordial, knowledgeable, nameless helpers. Even with social software tools, where everyone is remote from everyone else, you can give yourself a handle. (Would reference librarians would be willing to wear name tags with a handle? Among other things, this might be fun.)

As long as libraries maintain buildings, and staff public service points, the human factor of which we're so proud will always be a great strength. But this is the easiest way of offering interaction, because it's face to face. And door counts are going down.

More importantly, students often would rather help themselves than ask for help from a librarian. We may not like this trend, but we have to contend with it. Users are becoming self-sufficient. This doesn't mean that they're experts, of course, but many of them prefer their independence. They use the information tools they want in the way they want, without our mediation. OCLC’s 2005 Perception of Libraries and Information Resources found that 1% of users began their information search on a library’s Web site. This kind of thing doesn't happen for no reason. Maybe users prefer other sites because ours are closed, jargon-ridden, difficult to navigate, complex, and often unhelpful. They don't hold a candle to other information-rich sites that are the opposite of all this.

Can we make an impact on this trend? Well, the alternative is to cede the online space to third parties.

If we are justifiably proud of our human factor, then we need to employ it in everything we do, not just in ways in which we've already succeeded. We need to impart the strengths of our human interactions to the online realm - to our Web sites, our online services, our catalogs, our blogs, and our presence on third-party sites. There are signposts out there on how to proceed. The sites and services that our users prefer give us a wealth of ideas. We need to be studying these phenomena as seriously as we study anything else that impacts our users' information needs. If we can do that, and design straightforward, welcoming, participatory services that attract our users, then maybe we stand a chance.