Do librarians Get It?
Great thread in Slashdot on the role of librarians in the information age. How many of ‘em Get It? And how about one librarian’s article on the stereotypes?
The opinions of the Slashdot readers toward librarians wildly vary. Should a librarian spend $100K on new technology and nothing on books? A Slashdotter correctly zeroed in on certain librarians’ distorted priorities. Others took on the opposite extreme, technophobic librarians. What’s needed–just as in copyright law–is balance. On the positive side, a reader noted that a local library staffer shows up regularly for meetings of HoustonWireless.org and that his city’s local libraries are well on the way to becoming Wi-Fi hotspots.
What’s most encouraging is that many librarians are picking up highly practical Net-related skills in schools of library science (or schools of information science). Let’s hope that in another decade, and perhaps long before, the debate about librarians’ tech savvy will be obsolete. In fact, as librarian John Hubbard points out in his essay attacking the stereotypes, librarians have come up with many of the info-sci concepts that you might think have originated elsewhere. What’s more, some designers and programmers are, gasp, becoming librarians.
Surprise of surprise, at least one participant in the Slashdot thread expressed frustration at the obstacles that copyright laws have created for librarians interested in e-books. That issue, of course, is much of what TeleRead is about.
(Found via LibraryStuff. Thanks, Steve.)
Leave a Reply