[Publib] Jobs and People

[Rob Amend]

I don't think it's necessary to change our overall mission. I do think it's
necessary to leverage technology to *extend* our mission into the everyday
lives of people who would otherwise not use the library.

I believe that what is being discussed here is the general public *
perception* of librarianship and its impact on our budgets and our
livelihoods. No matter what the reality is, the public perception of us is
what will sink us or keep us afloat.

I don't want to complain about the state of librarianship as much as I want
to see a suggestion or two, here and there, about how we can convince a
large segment of our tech-savvy, tax-paying public that they really do need
us.

Rob Amend
Reference Librarian
rob.amend at gmail.com
blog.reftechrob.com


On Wed, Aug 12, 2009 at 8:37 AM, Kathleen Stipek <kstipek at aclib.us> wrote:

> I knew I shouldn't have started paying attention to this thread when I
> got off sick leave, because I knew it would make me mad, but against my
> better judgment I did and it did.
>
> I am so tired of the opinion leaders in my profession falling all over
> themselves to agree that librarians are all going to go the way of the
> passenger pigeon that if it wouldn't give my doctor a fit I'd have one.
> Those who lurk in their offices, go to conferences, and spend all their
> time talking among themselves need to come out on the public service
> floor and get a good look at our patrons.  Work the desk.  Answer the
> phone.  Do the e-mail and chat reference.  The same people who drove us
> crazy pre-internet by asking for books with blue covers and inquiring
> about biology books when they need a book on how to deal with chemo are
> still around, and the addition of the internet and databases has merely
> added to their confusion.  And those are the ones with halfway decent
> educations.
>
> They know little or nothing about evaluating information resources, so
> they can't tell when a site is trustworthy.  They can google and bing
> and do whatever else the technophiles have dreamed up in the last 2.0
> seconds, and they still aren't going to get the good stuff.  Think about
> the ill-educated and illiterate, and you get a picture of a whole lot of
> people who need a whole lot of librarians.
>
> Let us abandon this swooning surrender in the face of technophiles and
> governing bodies who want to do it all on the cheap and get back to
> patron service.  Libraries are not about the technology, they are
> getting good information to the people.  We may indeed need more
> technical skills because it's a technical world, but we also need
> humanist librarians with broad general educations who can make
> connections where there are no obvious connections to find that one
> piece of information that will make all the difference. We can make that
> difference if we choose to.  Most desk librarians already have made that
> choice.  Now we need the opinion leaders to back us up--in the words of
> the paratrooper battle cry--all the way.
>
> Kathleen Stipek
>
> Alachua County Library District
>
> 401 East University Avenue
>
> Gainesville, Florida 32601
>
> 352-334-3931, fax 352-334-3939
>
>
>
> --Non, merci
>
>  Cyrano de Bergerac
>
>
>
>
>
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