Alison Pope at Myndsi turned up an interesting quote about the value of skilled humans from the JHU Gazette in her Bangor librarians face internet threat:
William Brody, President of the John Hopkins University writes this in the John Hopkins GazetteMassive information overload is placing librarians in an ever more important role as human search engines. They are trained and gifted at ferreting out and vetting the key resource material when you need it. Today's technology is spectacular — but it can't always trump a skilled human.
There are plenty of tools out there that can help find and deliver and visualize information in new and fabulous ways. But I am the consumer of that information in the end, and I need to make sense of it according to my context and my needs. Librarians, researchers and good writers help me by applying their expertise and skill to the topic at hand.