Hello all. First time poster, long time lurker in this listserv. Two observations, if I may.
The first thing that seems to be forgotten in these discussions is time. Most of us wear several hats, each one of which once represented a full-time job. These are duties and responsibilities which my director, the law school, and the University consider my priority. If you are lucky, as I am, and have a director who understands the importance of keeping up with new technologies, you get professional development options, but they are subordinate to my job - I am more likely to get time and funds for something that will impact my department immediately or in the near future, and there is plenty of that currently available!
The second thing is, what is this all for? Talking about cloud computing, clustering, digital identity management, or data modeling is all fantastic, but how would they benefit library users? What serves our patrons best today and next month and a year from now? The users coming up to the reference desk or the catalog station or logging in remotely want help in the here and now and it's our responsibility to provide it. Becoming experts in every new technology and riding it until the next best thing comes along and then moving on to that seems to me to be counterproductive. I understand the need to grow and adapt - and G-d, in twenty-odd years in this profession I have adapted plenty! - but picking which new technologies will have long-term implications and which are short-term shiny new toys and convincing institutions to invest in them is... I don't even think "complicated" of "difficult" are the right words.
It seems to me that there are two kinds of librarianship being created by technology: a theoretical one dealing with technical developments in the creation and management of information, and a practical one dealing with providing such information to the user. A bit like medical researchers and general practitioners? Maybe this is a good and proper step, and we should start considering the implications in that, and how it can be used to further our own interests.
Emerita M. Cuesta
Asst. Director for Technical Services and Acquisitions Librarian
University of Miami Law Library
Coral Gables, FL 33124
(305)284-6330 (phone)
(305)284-3554 (fax)
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Weinheimer Jim
Sent: Monday, September 22, 2008 4:43 AM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Library Technologies and Library School (was Commercial Vendors and Open Source Software)
Alexander Johannesen wrote:
>Â Where are the experts in cloud computing, in clustering, in
>Â large-scale meta data management, in reducio indexing, in smart
>Â spidering? Where are the geeks who enjoy semantic data modelling
>Â across silos? Or the ones who knows all there is to know about digital
>Â identity management? Things that's actually damn, seriouslly
>Â you'll-all-go-down-in-flames-without-it technologies? Where is it?
>Â Where's the direction you need to make to get to it? Where's your
>Â passionate people who understands all this and wants to see it
>Â through?
While this is all very good, I would like to point out that it is still all experimental. We still don't know which way to go, and it may turn out that the solution will be some method discovered six months from now. There is nothing surprising about this since we are in a time of major changes and attempts must be made to decide what works and what does not work. Library administrators facing tight budgets can find it very difficult to justify experimentation which automatically means that there can be failure and resultant "waste" (at least in a strictly budgetary sense). I would also like to point out that individual libraries have normally left these affairs up to the vendors since open-source solutions are relatively new.
Â
>Â I've said it before, and I'll say it again; you need to come up with
>Â something radically different here. You can't beat this with smart,
>Â long-term and slowly adapting techniques you've mastered so well. You
>Â need radical, and radical is *not* library thinking.
Well said. We need radical changes and I see very few radical proposals coming from libraries. One of the main things--and easiest to implement--would be for libraries to open up their catalog records for general experimentation. I'm still not sure exactly why libraries are so reluctant to do this.
Jim Weinheimer
Received on Mon Sep 29 2008 - 15:01:57 EDT