[Publib] Second Life & hype

[K.G. Schneider]

> after all.  Meanwhile, we are all supposed to be blogging.  I mean,
> aren't we?  I read it in some library journal.  I am sure that we should
> be.  On the other hand, the few library blogs I have looked at--I don't
> claim all-knowingness here--have had almost zero responses to info that
> librarians have posted.  No big deal, I guess; info is relayed via
> blogs, and perhaps people read, absorb, and feel no need to reply.
> Though I thought that part of the Big Deal with blogs was that people
> *would* reply, thereby enhancing the give-and-take of *communication*.

I won't talk about Second Life, because it's not one of my communities of
participation, but when this thread started I assumed it would go in this
direction. 

John's particular paragraph above feels like a summary of several common
critiques about blogging: someone (nobody can ever figure out who this
masked person is) has said We All Need To Have A Blog, an assertion we can
then all laugh away, overbroad as it is; the author then states that he/she
has looked at library blogs and found they come up short; and then the post
concludes with reinforcing what libraries are REALLY about, which is
checking out books. (Full disclosure: this is in fact something I do quite a
bit at libraries. Later, I even return them.) 

Let a thousand flowers bloom... I would never say what someone should or
shouldn't post... and John has many thoughtful things to say... but I will
observe that for those of us who have spent a lot of our time in the
profession getting libraries to spread their wings a bit-maybe offering an
interesting book blog, or convincing their IT person not to block Myspace,
or implementing wifi or remote databases, or maybe just think ahead to
librarianship twenty or even fifty years from now-it can be a little
discouraging to hear on PUBLIB exactly what many of us who have played
similar roles to mine suspect some people we work with are thinking.  

Regarding the popularity of library blogs, I will only talk about one
blog-mine (a "librarian" blog, versus a "library" blog). A couple days ago I
was doing a whuffie (a free consult :> ) for a writer friend on getting her
blog stats up. She said but hey, I had 200 page views last month, isn't that
good? I said, well, I had over 2 million page views this year so far, and
I'm not even trying... it's just where my brain goes when it feels like
talking. Readership is engagement, is it not? I mean... aren't books a form
of conversation, author to reader, author to author, and reader to reader?
As for reader comments, I get an average of 2 comments per post, though that
is skewed between very popular posts and posts with no discussion, so it's
more like some posts strike home and get five to twenty-five or more
comments... a perfect parallel to the 80/20 rule that seems to apply to
everything, including books. 

On the one hand, most libraries probably don't need blogs per se, though if
I were to manage a library website I would ensure its news items could be
retrieved via RSS, which is bloggy enough I guess to be enough to accuse me
of Starting A Library Blog. But there's an important difference between "the
library needs a blog" and "the library needs to join the conversation."
However much we want to see our libraries through the lens of earlier eras,
the world of engagement is increasingly where people are today. Maybe not
Second Life, but when I have cousins sharing their Flickr pages, friends
kibitzing on Twitter and Facebook, and long-lost GI buddies showing up on
email or IM because they Googled me and found my blog... it's just
different. (My Techsource post about Dewey at the Maricopa system and at
Phoenix Public has over 50 comments-yes, some with me, but that's
conversation; I assume that a post on Techsource launches a discussion.) 

John Richmond and some of you have such fresh takes on the world that I'd
really like to see you weigh in on some of the interesting questions about
new technologies. Should libraries establish pages in MySpace, or is that
all wrong? What works and what doesn't with 2.0 services and libraries? And
what about the phenomenon of the shy young staff member who won't say two
words face to face but will chat quite happily, and productively, for half
an hour if you IM him at his desk?  What 2.0 technologies can enhance
traditional programming, such as book clubs, and how best to implement them?
What are the really key 2.0 technologies my library should be thinking
about, if not in terms of offering, at least in terms of understanding? Why
can't my library catalog support (X, or Y, or Z)? And why must avatars in
virtual worlds always be so physically improbable? 

But... the catch is that I increasingly see the library world dividing
generationally between list users and bloggers.  So perhaps PUBLIB will just
be what it is... and those of us in both worlds will have to grin and bear
it. (Or blog it!)

Karen G. Schneider
kgs at freerangelibrarian.com