Libraries and E-government part 2

To follow-up to yesterday's post about libraries and e-government. The point I'm trying to make is that libraries are being asked to assume a great deal of extra responsibility with no extra funding. Basically what is happening is that many government entities are streamlining their services in an effort to cut costs. One of the ways they do this is by putting information they used to provide in print form into an electronic format. While there is no doubt that this streamlines their workload, the work doesn't just disappear. In fact, the work load has to be picked up by someone else, and in this case it's the public library.

There are other solutions to the problem. One of them would be to just refuse to help and send them back to the government agency. While this would be extremely poor service by the library, it would get the message back to places like DCF that we are not going to pick up their slack.
Another option is to allow the customer internet access - which we already do - and show them which web site they need, then walk away and refuse to offer any additional help. Again this is a customer service problem, but it protects the librarian from a huge responsibility and liability for the patron personal information.
A third option is to arrange for a training session from someone working for a government department. DCF in Florida does have a liaison for most counties and is apparently willing to send people out to conduct training sessions. I feel this creates the problem of our enabling DCF to continue shirking their responsibility by taking over a portion of their job. Again, librarians are not and should not have to be social workers. On the other hand, if DCF is going to kick back to us some of the $30 million they are "saving" each year by not offering services, then perhaps we could make a deal.
The big picture here is that libraries need to find their niche for the 21st century. The only way to do this is by offering needed services for the public and being able to prove that we have value. This will mean having direct statistical evidence that we are providing services - number of applications for food stamps we helped with this month, number of e-government website visits, number of job applications assisted with, etc. If we can bring those kind of numbers to the state legislature via our lobbyists, then perhaps we can start seeing more money to offset the costs associated with being government's safety net.