In 2007 I participated in a workshop about the future of journalism. I was interested in the parallels between the state of journalism/ists and the state of libraries/ians. Both were showing signs of panic about the ‘democratising’ of their profession. With the rise of citizen journalism is there any need for professional journalists? With increasingly easy access to information is there any need for librarians?

This idea–that an abundance of something may be leading to the trivialisation of the professions associated with that something–seems to be spreading. A new post on the Neiman Foundation’s blog asks the same about photograph/ers.

At what point do we need to have a more general question about the relationship between abundance and trivialisation? If we generalise the discussion a bit more can we not look back to some of the great work that has come before about this?