Given the uncertain future of Go Local, this is at least one alternative for finding local health services.  (Another would be to go all alchemical on Go Local and transform it into a mobile app.  'Til then!)

That, at least, is the suggestion in Mike Shatzkin's recent article, Why are you for killing bookstores? Shatzkin's article doesn't actually address the fate of libraries, but Tim Spalding of LibraryThing fame makes the connection in his (depressing) follow-up, Why are you for killing libraries.*

As a health sciences librarian, I see ebooks as realistic necessities in health care environments, and could thus be lumped under the ebook supporting, library killing umbrella. Of course, that type of literature is not the type of literature that bookstores typically sell and libraries typically lend, so that type of ebook adoption and usage is not, I'm sure, an indicator of book repository death. True. More or less.

But even speaking generally, I'm not sure we're talking about an either/or proposition here, that ebook adoption kills book repositories. Yes - the library-as-book-repository is probably dying and the ebook probably has a part in its demise. But, by no means does that mean that the library in general is dying. On the contrary, you could flip the argument around and say that "the proliferation of ebooks makes libraries more relevant 'cause it provides 'em with the flexibility to do modern stuff with their space."

To me, it's not so much the proliferation of ebooks that kills libraries, but the inability to adapt to the times that does.

__________________
* For some discussion, take a look at the chat forum on LibraryThing as well.

And if Chekov were alive he'd be 150.  The Guardian's nice write up.

While the above was happening and not happening, this happened:

The big news of the day was, of course, this:

If I had a HOF vote, I wouldn't've voted for Dawson. But now that he's in I'm glad he's going to be wearing an Expos cap. It would've been ridiculous otherwise. (From Big League Stew's Flickr photostream)

And - oh yeah - there was something about  an iPad as well...

• A hospitalist cancelled a 9am research consultation w/ me.  Topic = The leadership and mentorship roles of physicians.  In preparation for the mtg, I threw together (what seemed to me to be) a decent set of search results (for a first search).  I sent him the PubMed results.
• A first-year student was, for some reason, unable to access Ovid from off-campus.  I spent a few minutes trouble-shooting before the problem ironed itself out.
• Volunteered to proctor a dental exam. 
• Had 2 separate research consultations w/ M1 students as part of their longitudinal case study groups.  One early afternoon; the other late.  Both students needed help finding literature on cultural perspectives of health care.  I showed them the research guide a colleague of mine put together for precisely this purpose.  Since both prefered PubMed, I translated the Ovidlish into PubMedese.  I also intro'd them to the ATLA Religion Database to give a non-med slant on things.  Last, I showed some advanced Google strategies (inc site searching) to help them minimize the garbage retrieval.  One of the consultations veered into the land of impact factors and H-Indexes. Aside: I should point out that the LCS is part of the first and second year medical curriculum.  Each small group has 12 or so students + a faculty leader + a librarian.  I've been assigned to 3 M1 groups and 1 M2.  Two of the M1 faculty leaders frequently send students to me.
• Had a working lunch w/ a colleague.

At home:

• Prepped for an early Wed morning presentation.  Topic = Keeping current w/ the literature.  Audience = Nuclear Medicine Fellows.

In any case, this week'll be a killer.  Expect a lot of posts about systematic review searching and presentation prepping/giving and other random project doing.  I'll continue using the Library Day in the Life to group these posts together.

• Started writing a portion of a report.  Since Fall '09, I've been a member of an article discovery working group - a group tasked by library administration to evaluate a few article discovery tools.  We - the committee members - personally evaluated each of the tools and then ran a successful user survey to, you know, get input from the users.  The report, which is due at the end of January (this week!), will summarize our findings and ultimately present our Taskers with recommendations.
• Held my weekly liaison office hours in the School of Dentistry (2 hours). 
• Co-chaired a committee meeting comprised of members from both the library and the Office of Medical Education.  We are, as you can imagine, both heavily involved in med-ed, yet to date have done very little in the way of collaboratin'.  Thus - we're getting together committee-style to make sure we don't continue along this isolated path.
• Finished my section of the report late in the evening.  First draft in Google Docs. 

* By 'sent around' I mean we put it on our homepage and let users find it themselves.  Judging by the 331 response rate, that process seemed to work well enough.