[Publib] Library 2.0?!

[Kathleen Stipek]

I'd like to play devil's advocate for a moment.  What if what the patron
was asking was "What is this that you are spending my taxes on?  What
does it do for me?"  And I'll bet that the reference staff couldn't tell
her because they didn't know themselves.  It had been installed with
either a cursory explanation and the dreaded admonition to embrace the
technology or a bored trainer from Big Hardware or Big Software had done
the canned presentation once again and said 'just play around with it.'
If they caviled at the new thing they either got the embrace admonition
again or had it suggested to that they were dreary obstructionists and a
drag on the profession.  Been there, done that, and was overcharged for
the t-shirt.
 
All too often those who purchase the Next Big Technological Thing forget
about the end users and that carbon-based interface who has to explain
it to them.  The desk librarians need to know what the new thing is,
what it does, and the hopes the folks up top have for it.  They need
good training, cheat-sheets, and online tutorials so that when a patron
says 'what IS this thing' they can rattle off the possibilities.
Something I would like to see happen besides the explanations is for
libraries to write training, cheat-sheets, and tutorials into the
purchase contracts for the Next Big Thing with stiff penalty clauses for
failures.  If they want libraries' money, then Big Hardware and Big
Software would have to provide not only the single session but would
have to provide the followup.  The administrators who lead the charge on
this would find themselves ranked right up there with Dewey and
Ranganathan as great leaders of librarianism.  Because we carbon-based
interfaces really need to know what the taxpayers money is being spent
on.  They ask--and they expect answers.
 
Kathleen Stipek

Alachua County Library District

401 East University Avenue

Gainesville, Florida 32601

(352-334-3931) fax (352-334-3948)

--Non, merci.

  Cyrano de Bergerac


________________________________

From: publib-bounces at webjunction.org
[mailto:publib-bounces at webjunction.org] On Behalf Of Bonnie Sue
Brzozowski
Sent: Thursday, July 05, 2007 5:02 PM
To: kgs at bluehighways.com
Cc: p
Subject: Re: [Publib] Library 2.0?!


I'm glad you mentioned this, Karen.  And I think it points to the fact
that Web 2.0 applications (or certain Web 2.0 applications) are not
going to appeal to all patrons right now or even seem particularly
meaningful.  They may currently appeal very little to entire patron
bases.  But I don't think this makes, at least, a librarian's awareness
of and familiarity with them unimportant.  Just as with anything, there
are people who jump on the bandwagon early, those who jump on late
(sometimes it seems to me this group includes a fair amount of public
library computer users), and the people in between.  I think it's
extremely important for librarians to be in that early bird group.
Granted, way-too-quick adoption can be extremely problematic (what if
the bandwagon never really takes off?) and of no value to patrons, but
if librarians keep themselves in-the-know they will be ready for
anything, be thinking of ways the technology could benefit them and
their patrons, and be thinking of the ways in which patrons may approach
them with assistance with the technology.  There's the potential for Web
2.0 applications to replace many desktop applications and it allows
users to share so much content with one another; it is certainly
worthwhile, if within reason, for librarians to be trying these things
out.  Also, it is especially important for librarians to know about the
bugs and problems too ( e.g.,
http://tech.msn.com/security/articlepcw.aspx?cp-documentid=5002604&GT1=1
0138 ).

Bonnie Brzozowski

Carrboro Cybrary
100 N. Greensboro St.
Carrboro, NC 27510
(919) 918-7387
http://www.co.orange.nc.us/library/cybrary/ 


On 7/5/07, K.G. Schneider <kgs at bluehighways.com> wrote: 

	> Reinforcing my suspicion that a lot of 2.0-ness (tagging,,
blogging,
	> video, audio, social whatever) appeals far, far more to
librarians than
	> patrons!
	
	Your patron is making an important observation: this service is
"outside the 
	flow" (the patron's workflow for discovery and patron
interaction). Why
	WOULD they use it?
	
	But let's set aside the whole 2.0 issue for a moment-it's a
phrase that can
	be distracting. What if your catalog could seamlessly leverage
social 
	information, such as what a wide swath of the public thought of
books-sort
	of like Novelist, but leveraging a large user community instead
of a
	company's say-so?
	
	This actually is in work at Danbury Public Library, which has
incorporated 
	"Librarything for Libraries" into its catalog.
	
	Incidentally, for web searchers, the library's data is outside
the flow,
	too; it's stuck inside a library database (the OPAC). Just an
observation. 
	
	Karen G. Schneider
	kgs at freerangelibrarian.com
	
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