Libraries today are chock full of staff that were hired before the rise of the World Wide Web and as a consequence many are unable to keep up with ever increasing IT mediated task loads. This reality holds us back in several ways: new staff are overburdened with new mission critical work, management is unable to change direction or course easily due to a lack of technical capacity to deliver, to name two.

What did Bell Canada do in the late 1980's when faced with the same problem on a bigger scale? They forced 10's of thousands into early retirement. Strategically, I think libraries need to begin to do the same before it is too late and our institution is dammaged beyond repair. Nobody is entitled to a position for life if they are unable to do what is demanded of them.