After I had posted about Librarians and Google, I came across this piece by Richard Danner

Redefining a Profession

I can now do personal research online. Am I more productive than if I had to go to the library? Of course, I am.(1)
“Information isn’t powerful. Information isn’t power. … Hey, who’s got the most information? Librarians do! It’s hard to imagine a group of people with less power than librarians.(2)
It has always been difficult for library users to understand precisely what librarians do, or why some of the people employed in libraries pointedly identify themselves as professional workers, while the work of other library employees is not considered to be professional. Now, in a time of massive change in the ways that information is produced and distributed, located and used, the continued relevance of both librarianship and the library as an institution are increasingly called into question.
As ever-greater amounts of information are directly accessible in interactive electronic environments, researchers in law and other disciplines are likely to modify their information-seeking behaviors to include more direct searching for information , leaving librarians not only with the need to justify their claims to professional status, but the added burden of explaining why they are needed at all. What value will librarians add to the information-seeking process in an environment that seems to require less mediation between individuals and the information they seek? If intermediaries do continue to be needed, will they require knowledge and skills different from the traditional skills of librarians?(6)
…
Ultimately, therefore, the future of the information professions could be determined by the realities of the workplace and market forces. This is not a given, however, because librarianship and the other information professions have not developed along the lines of traditional professions like medicine and law.  As a result the information professions should be better positioned for adapting to changes in work and organizations than professions still organized around nineteenth century models.  Andrew Abbott has observed that librarianship is best thought of as  “a loose aggregation of groups doing relatively different kinds of work, but sharing a common orientation,” and that librarians should think of themselves in those terms.  Unlike the traditional professions, such “federated professions” give up full control over professional credentials, monopolies of service, and “a certain clarity of identity,” but in exchange they gain “the generalist’s ability to have some members of the profession ready for any contingency, some knowledge available to follow any new development, … the ability to absorb subfields that challenge them [and] the ability to coopt organizational resources for their own ends.”
 Yet, without attention, foresight, and the willingness to take advantage of these capabilities, librarians could find that market forces alone will control and limit the future development of the profession.  The outcomes will be unpredictable for librarianship, which is the best-established of the information professions, has played the largest and most important role among them, and should have the confidence to recognize its strengths and define its own future. 

Read the whole article here

And I do believe he is right.  The establishment of this community is just one indication that we are adapting, recognizing our strengths and defining a future.