During a recent workshop with a national library network, we found ourselves discussing a question that carried more weight than it may initially appear to.

​

What happens to libraries if fewer people read physical books?

​

On the surface, the concern was practical. Digital media continues to expand. Research habits are changing. AI increasingly summarizes, curates, and retrieves information in ways that would have seemed unimaginable only a few years ago. If knowledge no longer lives primarily on shelves, what happens to the institutions built around those shelves?

​

At first, the conversation revolved around services and functions: cataloging books, preserving archives, maintaining collections, supporting researchers, and managing access to publications and journals. In other words: the WHAT, the tangible services the institution provides.

​

To explore the topic further, I introduced Simon Sinek’s well-known “Golden Circle” model, which distinguishes between WHY, HOW, and WHAT. At the same time, we connected the discussion to one of the “6 Conditions of Team Effectiveness” developed by Richard Hackman and Ruth Wageman: Compelling Purpose.

​

A compelling purpose answers a deceptively simple question: Why does this team exist in the first place?

​

The discussion slowly began to shift. Perhaps the true purpose of a library is not to store books at all. Books, archives, databases, and catalog systems may simply be different technological expressions of something deeper. What librarians ultimately help preserve and facilitate is access to knowledge, understanding, learning, and research across generations.

​

Seen from that perspective, shelves and physical books are not the purpose. They are one historical manifestation of the purpose. And that changes everything. Because if the WHY remains relevant, then the WHAT can evolve. Some services may change, others may disappear altogether, without compromising the institution’s deeper purpose.

​

The more we discussed this idea, the more it occurred to me that this may not only apply to institutions. It may increasingly apply to individual careers as well.

​

For decades, most of us were encouraged to define ourselves professionally through relatively stable categories.

​

“I’m an accountant.”

​

“I’m a financial analyst.”

​

“I’m a radiologist.”

​

“I’m a project manager.”

​

Those identities made sense in a world where professions changed slowly and organizational structures were comparatively stable. Skills accumulated over long periods of time. Career paths were relatively predictable. The tools changed gradually enough that expertise could remain relevant for decades.

​

Today, that stability is becoming less certain.

​

This does not mean that professions suddenly disappear overnight or that every alarming AI prediction will materialize exactly as forecasted. Reality is usually more nuanced than either the optimists or pessimists suggest. But it does seem increasingly likely that many professions will change substantially in the coming years.

​

Research from organizations such as McKinsey and the World Economic Forum suggests that AI is more likely to automate specific tasks than entire professions outright. Administrative work, data processing, documentation, scheduling, routine analysis, and information retrieval are already being transformed across industries. At the same time, entirely new forms of work are emerging. The result is less a simple replacement of humans and more a gradual reshaping of roles, responsibilities, and expectations.

​

That distinction matters because it suggests that long-term relevance may depend less on a specific job title and more on understanding the deeper value underneath the role itself. Technical skills still matter, but they are increasingly temporary containers for deeper forms of value.

 

An accountant may ultimately create value not through spreadsheets themselves, but through helping organizations reduce uncertainty, interpret complexity, and make sound decisions.

​

A radiologist’s deeper value may not simply lie in reading images, but in integrating judgment, context, communication, and patient care in situations where ambiguity still matters enormously.

​

A teacher’s role may extend far beyond delivering information. Knowledge has never been more accessible. Helping people interpret, contextualize, challenge, and meaningfully engage with that knowledge may become far more important.

​

In many cases, the tools, platforms, and technical processes will continue to evolve rapidly. The underlying human contribution, however, may endure far longer.

​

If that is true, then perhaps future career resilience will depend less on protecting a particular professional identity and more on understanding the deeper purpose beneath it.

​

This requires a different set of questions. Not only: “What skills should I learn?”

 

But also:

​

“What human problem do I help solve?”

​

“What remains valuable even if the tools change?”

​

“What kind of uncertainty do I help reduce?”

​

“What would genuinely be missing if my contribution disappeared?”

​

Those questions are harder to answer than selecting a degree program or collecting certifications. They are also far less static, but they may ultimately prove more durable.

​

Ironically, this shift may make careers simultaneously less stable and more human. Less stable because technical skills and professional structures may evolve faster than before. More human because qualities such as judgment, trust, interpretation, ethical reasoning, contextual thinking, relationship-building, and creativity become more important precisely when information itself becomes abundant and increasingly automated.

​

In many organizations, AI is already becoming a kind of ever-present assistant: researching, summarizing, drafting, structuring, and analyzing. In some ways, leaders have always relied on others for these functions. What is different now is the scale, speed, and constant accessibility of that support.

​

That creates enormous leverage. But it also changes something more subtle: the relationship between people and their professional identities. If large parts of the technical execution can increasingly be supported, accelerated, or partially automated, then the real question becomes: what remains uniquely valuable underneath the execution itself?

​

For many people, that can be an unsettling realization because professions are rarely just economic categories. They are often deeply tied to status, identity, competence, and meaning. Perhaps that is why the current transition feels psychologically different from many earlier technological shifts.

​

Which brings us back, unexpectedly, to libraries.

​

Technology has always changed how knowledge is stored, accessed, and shared. The printing press transformed knowledge. So did the internet. AI will almost certainly do the same. But the deeper human need behind libraries - preserving knowledge, facilitating learning, and helping people navigate complexity - remains remarkably constant.

 

The same may increasingly be true for careers.

​

Personally, I still hope the darker predictions about the disappearance of physical books never fully materialize. As someone whose reading lists grow faster than the available shelf space in my house, I remain deeply attached to actual books and to the tactile experience of wandering through libraries and bookstores: picking up unfamiliar titles, leafing through pages, studying cover designs, and stumbling across unexpected discoveries.

​

But perhaps that attachment itself contains a useful reminder.

Technology changes.

​

Human needs evolve more slowly.

​

And people who understand the deeper purpose beneath their work may ultimately adapt far better than those who define themselves only by the current form that work happens to take.

​

Chris Newman - 

Newman Seminars