Neil Gaiman? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: In today’s world of search engines and myriad webpages some have questioned the future of libraries and librarians. The award-winning fantasy author Neil Gaiman coined an insightful saying on this topic. In essence, a librarian can help guide you to find the right answer from the hundreds of thousands proffered by search engines. Are you familiar with this quotation?
Reply from Quote Investigator: In 2010 Neil Gaiman was appointed Honorary Chair of National Library Week in the U.S. On April 16 of that year Gaiman spoke about the changing role of the library in the 21st century during an interview conducted in Indianapolis, Indiana, and a segment of his commentary was uploaded to YouTube. Boldface has been added to excerpts:1
We used to live in a world in which there wasn’t enough information. Information was currency. Now we’re in a world in which there’s too much information. There’s information absolutely everywhere. So instead of sending a librarian out into the desert to come back with the one rock that you need from the desert, it’s now a matter of sending a librarian into a jungle to come back with the one tree, the one leaf, in the jungle that you probably wouldn’t be able to get.
Google can bring you back, you know, a hundred thousand answers. A librarian can bring you back the right one.
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