People of the book, leaving quietly

What we study – material on a computer : finding, preserving, absorbing (that is, digitising analogue material: text, images, sounds), re-using and creating (to a minor extent) – we've regarded as something that we do that adds value to traditional subjects (history, literary studies, whatever) and that our department exists because the medium is new, and the traditional scholars and students are not really up to date with the new medium. Whether using it to analyse what exists already, or to analyse that which has been created on the new medium. The implicit assumption is that eventually they'll catch up and we won't be needed anymore. We thought that with undergraduates in level 1 – that as the level of computer literacy rose so the need for the course would fall. We didn't realise they would not suddenly come in understanding what a database was and how it might be used, or even that they wouldn't start to arrive knowing how to search for and evaluate information. The alternative view is that as the creative and the intellectual world moves onto and into the new medium then it is we who will continue and the people of the book who will gradually fade away to become irrelevant.