Cliff November 3rd, 2006
I spoke today at the meeting of the South Georgia Associated Libraries, which met here at VSU. SGAL is a loose confederation of area libraries who get together for professional development, education and fellowship.
I was originally supposed to present on “Tantalizing Technology,” a talk that I give to faculty and staff about the emerging tools that are available for their classes and/or departments. But after a little thought about my audience, I decided to expand it to include Web/Library 2.0 topics. And as a last minute kick, I added the entire text of The User is Not Broken. I titled it, “It’s all about the User! Web 2.0, Library 2.0, and Tech Tools.”
I was quite surprised with the results.
I did the normal Library 2.0 introduction (which most librarians have heard by now, but better safe than sorry). I then went line-by-line through The User is Not Broken, and asked folks to comment on it. So in effect, we had a two hour discussion about our jobs, our users, our tools, and what we’re doing (and should be doing). I didn’t want this to be a lecture, but a conversation. Here’s a paraphrase of some of the conversation (based on my poor memory):
- We’ve been user-centered for our whole existence! It’s insulting to the previous generations of librarians to imply that this is a new idea.
- The user is not the sun, knowledge is the sun.
- The user may not be broken, but neither are we.
- Ow. You’re making us think.
- Of course the library is a place to dream. That’s what we have couches for. I saw a whole lot of REM sleep happening on my way here!
I really wish that I had recorded this conversation, so that I could have podcast it. I encourage you all to do just that!
Why did I do this? Well, one of the things that is truly frustrating about the Library 2.0 conversation is that it’s the same folks all the time talking about it (this includes me!). So I tried to have librarians engage with this stuff who might not normally, and give them a comfortable environment in which to disagree, argue, cheer, laugh, and talk about it. By doing this, we’re truly closing the Librarian’s Digital Divide, and giving non-techie librarians the opportunity to get exited or pissed off about this stuff.
As much as I loved Internet Librarian 2006, everything I learned will be useless unless my fellow librarians here willingly choose to adopt some of these services and tools. To do that, I must first give them the opportunity to engage these ideas without techie judgment or prejudice. Only time will tell if we are successful in that.
