"Do one thing and do it well."

In business it is recommended to "Do one thing and do it well."

The very successful Google names this principle as the guiding force behind their decision to dedicate themselves to the search.

Google has worried me on behalf of the library.

This is Google's Mission Statement:
"Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

This is the first thing of Google's "Ten Things" statement, written in addition to their Mission Statement.

"It’s best to do one thing really, really well.  We do search. With one of the world‘s largest research groups focused exclusively on solving search problems, we know what we do well, and how we could do it better. Through continued iteration on difficult problems, we’ve been able to solve complex issues and provide continuous improvements to a service that already makes finding information a fast and seamless experience for millions of people. Our dedication to improving search helps us apply what we‘ve learned to new products, like Gmail and Google Maps. Our hope is to bring the power of search to previously unexplored areas, and to help people access and use even more of the ever-expanding information in their lives." ---Google

Until the digital age, and increased digital literacy, the library was the place to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." Wasn't it?

The library cannot out-search Google, nor can it stay ahead of IBM and Sony in technology. If we go to a paperless society, are libraries doomed?

There is no umbrella protection for the future of public libraries through the Library of Congress. According to the Library of Congress Mission Statement, the LC's mission is "to support the Congress in fulfilling its constitutional duties and to further the progress of knowledge and creativity for the benefit of the American people."
http://www.loc.gov/about/mission.html


This is an interesting article concerning libraries’online public access catalogs (OPACs)  competing with, and even threatened by Web search engines. 

 http://eprints.rclis.org/bitstream/10760/16057/1/advances_in_librarianship_preprint.pdf