Librarian Hostility Towards Computers

Dorothea Salo mentioned this article in a recent post. I'm going to lift the abstract and repost it here just so you don't have to go clicking around to find it:

I feel somewhat like Daniel must have felt in the lions' den, and if I respond in something like an ominous roar, let me make clear that I address myself primarily to card-carrying, dogmatically convinced computerators who have wrapped themselves in the security blanket of the computer, and do not dare to think about the basic problem that it presents to librarianship. If this kind of computerator gets mad at some of the things I say, it is because his ego is involved in the computer, the worst form of slavery for man; if he does not, it indicates he is still capable of independent thought about the basic problems, and there is some hope.

This article is from 1972 when computers were still relatively new and the internet was in its infancy so a certain level of mistrust is to be expected. It is nice to know that we've come a long way even if some of us have been dragging our feet for most of the journey.