Librarians were creating new roles for themselves, and this was reflected in the trade literature. Discussions grew out of collection development policies and extended into new cooperative strategies, such as centralized cataloguing and inter-library loans.³

The library's role was also changing. It was suggested that local content be a focus for collections, including authors' works and newspapers.⁴ The librarian would need to develop marketing and negotiating skills, to be seen as a responsible authoritative figure when liaising with organizations in the community. As the workload increased, specialization would be necessary: the librarians would focus on "professional" activities and more routine tasks would be left to assistants.

Librarians suddenly became more than clerks in a warehouse of books. More importantly, this image was discarded by librarians themselves: they were professionals.

The library became a repository for archival materials as well as monographs.
Soon, librarians would be using microfilm, cd-roms, and the internet databases for storage.