If you believe that librarians are just the people who buy the books, catalog them, and sign them out, then librarians have no future. But that is not who we are. We are mediators between patrons and the information they need. This means that we offer reference service (since most people have very limited research skills), find hand-to-find resources and provide information literacy instruction to develop people as skilled information users. There's no end to the ways we will continue to contribute.

Librarians/Information Services professionals can also be found performing so well in library marketing corners of the institutions they serve.

They can enlighten their users with information relating to their library products and fill their information gap in relation to those products.

They can assist with research, give users tips/information on how to avoid e.g. plagiarism.

Librarianship is still relevant. Librarians - We just need to move/change with time and align our roles with what is needed at that time, in what medium and route.

Training spaces - We can thrive in this spaces as well.

Let us serve. We chose this career - Lets move with times and adapt to change. We will stay relevant.

This is a large topic. Perhaps it is worthwhile consulting following bibliographies: Bibliography | Why Libraries, Why Librarians? - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign https://publish.illinois.edu/whylibraries/bibliography/

Or Bibliography - Future of the Library - Research Guides at Davidson College (libguides.com) https://davidson.libguides.com/FutureoftheLibrary as possible starting points for learning about this topic.

Since libraries all over the world are committed in ensuring that information resources are provided for clienteles, it is the duty of librarians to interpret the mandate such that these services are effectively delivered.

Librarians will always be relevant today and in future. In future, they will perform more roles in the following areas:

1) assist lecturers in developing lecture notes

2) involved in CAS and SDI

3) participate advocacy/Information literacy services

4) provide IT services to users

Librarians will also have a profound role in mediating between patrons and information technology developers & vendors to help introduce patrons to technologies like reference managers; timeline, note taking and hypertext systems; bibliometric visualizations; large language model text summarization and question answering tools; and clustering & recommender systems. This can take the form of both curating what tools to offer to patron and providing them with individualized guidance on what tools to use and how to sequence their usage into a productive workflow.

"A study indicated future roles of librarians as data librarians, license negotiator, embedded librarians, blended librarians, and relationship workers, to mention few, despite their different levels in different countries."

Source: Library Management [online], 2018. 39. ISSN 0143-5124. Available from: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/LM-02-2017-0015/full/html

I think that in the future it would be appropriate for librarians to link the needs of the user and his interests. For example: “Personalized Recommendations: AI algorithms can analyze user preferences, browsing history, and academic interests to provide personalized recommendations for books, articles, and research papers.”

Source: CHIANCONE, Chris, 2023. The Library of the Future: AI in Public Libraries [online].  Available from: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/library-future-ai-public-libraries-chris-chiancone

From my own experience, I think that in the future, Makerspace will also be important in the library. At the Faculty of Philosophy of Masaryk University in the Czech Republic, where I am studying, Makerspace with 3D printing or virtual reality is available in the library. Similar Makerspace can also be seen in the library in Prague and other cities. I think that in the future, Makerspace will be extended to even more libraries. The role of the librarian would thus also consist in helping users with these technologies. The library could be presented not only as a building with books, but also as a place falling into today's times, where the user can meet new technologies.

Within the field of Information Studies and Librarianship, which I am studying, it is also possible to qualify as a teacher-librarian. His or her work consists in cooperation between the school and the library. I think that in the future (in the ideal idea) there could be more of these librarians and therefore the library could be shown in a new light.

I would recommend to read the library strategic plans as appropriate sources. Here are the goals for the future running of libraries. For example, the Library of Congress Strategic Plan. (For example, I would recommend focusing on the city (or country) where I live and what libraries I have nearby. I would also look for whether these libraries have issued strategic plans and whether they have focused on their implementation in the past years.)

Source: Enriching the Library Experience: Strategic Plan of the Library of Congress [online], 2019. [cit. 2023-09-22]. Available from: https://www.loc.gov/strategic-plan/

In conclusion, I think that in the future there will still be libraries as stone buildings, but I imagine that the librarian will normally also more cooperate with digital technologies and also allow users to access them.