Ballad in Plain E

One blog I’ve been reading a lot lately is Meredith Farkas’s “Information Wants to be Free“. She does a great job of bringing to light what other library bloggers are talking about, which is great for me, since I discovered long ago that I can’t possibly read all the blogs I’d like to read. What got me hooked on her blog was a very thoughtful response to a Library Revolution post on overachievers, underachievers, and motivation - which had me thinking about the debate all day. That’s the sign of a great blog! Meredith seems to be level-headed with a good sense of humour, and her writing is a pleasure to read.

In today’s post, she describes a “Library 2.0 idea adoption spectrum” that she and a colleague devised, which ranges from “Twopointopians” (awesome term apparently coined by Annoyed Librarian) to “Alienated”. It was an interesting exercise to determine where I fit into the spectrum. According to Meredith,

“I think most people who are into this stuff, me included, fall into the “Pragmatists” category. We are big technology fans, but we understand that these tools should only be used in libraries to fill needs. We realize that not all of our patrons are tech-savvy and that many of them have needs that can’t be filled by 2.0 technologies. We know that any time we focus on a 2.0 technology, we take time and resources away from something else, so we must carefully prioritize our technology use at work. Pragmatists manage to be both excited and skeptical.”

[my emphasis]

I guess I must be a pragmatist, but I suspect I may be headed towards becoming a grazer, because my excitement is wearing thin. Some days, I think I’ll scream if I read about one more new 2.0 application - library-related or not. I think it’s silly that it even needs a name anymore, which I guess it why I find the term “Library 2.0″ so ridiculous. For me, it comes down to one main thing. Either an application is useful, or it is not. I like Meredith’s assessment of why some uses of new technologies work, and others don’t:

“And a lot of the initial things I tried to implement failed. Why? Because I put the tool before the need, I didn’t consider the fact that my colleagues may not want to use these tools, and I didn’t really consider the maintenance burden these tools have.

…

[W]e’ve been successfully providing IM reference now since January 2006. But it’s mainly because it was done right, putting the need before the tool.”

[my emphasis]

Another aspect that comes into play here, I think, must be a generational divide. Had these new sorts of user-generated, AJAXy applications not been given a name and given the cool factor, I don’t think anyone my age (26) would have batted an eye. For my generation, “the next thing” has always been an inherent feature of the internet. I think when it comes to the internet, “progress” is a neutral descriptor - it’s just time marching on. The internet isn’t necessarily improving with all these allegedly 2.0 applications.

It just occurred to me, right now, that for me, keeping up with changes in web technologies has never really been “keeping up”–it’s just been the way it’s always been: finding out about new things, trying them out, using them if they’re good, and not if they’re bad. Maybe I’m biased because I’m the kind of person who enjoys reading about this sort of stuff — I know that not everyone does. Maybe for them, keeping up is an active effort.

It’s like this: when I was in high school, I had a couple of Tripod and Geocities homepages dedicated to assorted musicians and actors (and okay, yes, some bad teen poetry). In college, I had a Livejournal. Now in my working life, I have this blog. It’s just one thing replacing the other. But did people 20 years older than me have this experience? Or are they now looking at the internet with all these crazy things you can do and feeling totally overwhelmed - and either thinking “I have to master every single thing out there” or conversely, “I got along fine for ages without these, so why should I bother?”. I don’t know - I’m just speculating. Maybe what I’m wondering is whether you would find these types of “Library 2.0 - boon or bane?” discussions at all in a strictly under-30 set? It’s just interesting to ponder.

I know I’m all over the place here. I’m just trying to figure out where I stand in all of this. I guess I’m also a little worried that my growing wariness of this hype is going to turn me off of the internet–and that would probably not be good for my career. I’m already a curmudgeon in many other aspects of my life–and work is one area where I can’t afford to be!

Anyway, thanks, Meredith, for giving me a lot to think about and the fodder to break out of my blogging rut!

Hands-down, the lack of library services - when I’m at work, anyway. I didn’t realise how often I used VPL’s electronic resources! I keep forgetting that they’re unavailable, and getting a no-service message from the website.

I have an electronic alert set up to tell me every time the phrase “library technician” appears in the news. The unfortunate thing is that library techs are never in the news so much as when there’s a strike.

How are VPL’s staff doing, I wonder? There were a couple of interesting (brings up the gender-wage gap) letters (brings up the “not everyone who works in a library is a librarian” issue) to the editor a few days ago in the Vancouver Sun. Leave a comment if you’ve been affected by the strike.

My colleague Steve Matthews, who is the president of VALL this year, recently left Clark Wilson, the law firm where he’d been the Director of Knowledge Services for almost ten years. He’s just launched a new company called Stem Legal, which helps law firms develop and deploy web marketing strategies. And of course, he’s writing a blog to go along with it: Law Firm Web Strategy.

If Steve’s first blog, Vancouver Law Librarian Blog, is anything to go by, Law Firm Web Strategy will be a stellar resource, too. He’s already got some good posts up on managing web properties and law firm website demographics.

While I think the Vancouver law library community will feel somewhat at a loss with Steve not being “one of us” anymore, his drive and leadership in his VALL position will continue to inspire and motivate us. Steve was one of the first people who encouraged me to start a blog, and has been a great informal mentor to many of us library techs who are passionate about technology.

New and future Stem Legal clients are luckier and wiser than they know. I’m so excited for Steve, and wish him success and fulfillment in his new venture!

The August issue of LTAIG News just been published, and the NSALT summer issue is out, too!

BTW, AALT has back issues of its lengthy journal , AALT Technician, on its website - though the link to the Spring issue is dead.