Personal blog: All opinions are only my own, unless you want to borrow them. (he/him)
One of the primary functions of libraries – and librarians – especially in our current Information Age, is to sort through the ocean of information available to us and find the truly worthwhile bits. We talk about “tsunamis” of information, “deluges” of information, and we’re acutely aware of how easily people can get lost and drown in it all.
I recently had an experience that made all this very real to me.
It’s self-evident that more and more library content is being delivered digitally – ebooks, emagazines, digital movies and TV shows, digital music, databases. It’s even more self-evident to point out that many of the third party econtent services to which libraries subscribe suck in some truly horrendous ways. Sometimes the content is bad, or the selection is too limited, or the user interface is frustratingly complicated and unfriendly. (It’s frequently a combination of these.)
Few of these services – if any – live up to the expectations we have for them, or the standards we set for non-econtent library services. Third party econtent subscription services always seem to make us feel like we’re compromising too much.
From what I can see, when it comes to econtent services, opinion amongst library professionals gets divided into two camps:
In the last year, I’ve flip-flopped between these two camps more than a few times.
Continue reading “Libraries & Third Party eContent Services”
[NOTE: This is a piece I originally posted on Facebook on March 23, 2012. It’s already somewhat dated, even only a year later, but I want it to live on my blog here because it addresses an issue that I believe is still, and will continue to be, one of the central questions librarians face in a world where more and more of our content is being delivered digitally via third party services.]
Is not good enough better or worse than nothing at all?
Continue reading “Libraries & eBooks”
When I got to work this morning, I had an email from a co-worker sitting in my Inbox. He’d sent it to all staff in our Library. It was a link to the following video interview:
Father’s Pride, Support Brings 10-Year-Old Son To Tears During Emotional Interview [VIDEO] (posted by NewsOne on June 9, 2013)
My co-worker’s message to go along with this video was simple and powerful:
I hope this message finds everyone in good spirits. I am sharing this video link because, every once in a while, I think we all need a reminder of why we decided to enter the world of literature and education.
[This is] a link as to why we as a library system are so vital in the 21st century. … I hope your takeaway is the one I had as to why all of our jobs are so important.
Scroll down in the article to watch the video. For some sense of the part libraries play in the lives of children everywhere, the power we have to contribute to the transformative process of education, see how they talk about the role of of reading at 2:30 and again at 3:00.
This is a message we need to hear and it’s one that we need to communicate to our communities. This is the role we play in people’s lives.
Kim Leeder at In the Library with the Lead Pipe wrote a fantastic and thought-provoking piece about the rhetoric that characterizes the debate between so-called “traditional” and “modern” libraries. It’s worth the read!
Adventures in Rhetoric: The Traditional Library (posted on June 5, 2013)
This is the comment I left on her article:
We get so caught up in comparing the form and practical functioning of different types of libraries that it becomes all too easy to believe that these forms and functions are the definition of a library. We must remember that form and function are merely strategies employed to try and achieve deeper goals and serve essential functions in our communities.
Continue reading “Traditional vs. Modern Libraries”
Jason Kramer nails it!
The Downside of Being Universally Liked | Advocate’s Corner (posted by Library Journal on May 15, 2013)
Some excerpts:
In the highly competitive and aggressive world of politics, no enemies usually means no allies. In my experience elected officials (and staff) have nice feelings about libraries, not strong feelings. As a result libraries, politically, suffer from benign neglect. The warriors don’t go where there is no war. …
Continue reading “The Answer is the Library”
I love Rita Meade’s (@ScrewyDecimal) reaction piece to Michael Rosenblum’s op-ed “What’s a Library?” that was posted by the Huffington Post on May 8, 2013.
A Librarian’s Response to “What’s a Library?” (posted on Book Riot on May 13, 2013)
[With apologies for plagiarizing her title.]
Let’s be kind – let’s give Mr. Rosenblum the benefit of the doubt and assume he was honestly trying to critique the current state of libraries in some kind of difficult to discern attempt to help.
He still failed.
Continue reading “Another Librarian’s Response to "What’s a Library?"”
There’s so much wisdom in this post, I had to share it here:
The Mobile Challenge | The User Experience by Aaron Schmidt (posted by Library Journal on May 6, 2013)
The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: The Science of Paper versus Screens by Ferris Jabr (posted by Scientific American on April 11, 2013)
When I was in grad school, I had an idea to conduct research into the neurological underpinnings of reading on paper vs. computer screens vs. ebooks. While my vision for the project was beyond the scope of what I could accomplish in the program and thus never got started, I’ve continued to be obsessed with this facet of our modern technology. I’ve written about it on this blog before. I continue to follow research being done on the subject.
This article from Scientific American sums up well what we currently know about how our brains process written language through different presentation media. It appears that I’m correct in my belief that these acts of reading are qualitatively different as far as our brains are concerned.
As librarians, we need to account for these differences in our resources – especially when it comes to education and literacy initiatives.
This is simply one of the best summaries I’ve read of the importance of libraries:
Libraries are uniquely positioned to make sense of today’s tsunami-like exposure to information, to allow people to transform facts into knowledge and to move knowledge along divergent paths of practical relevance and unbridled inspiration.
Libraries are uniquely positioned to do this for an audience of all ages and status — children, college students, community members, university scholars, researchers and just plain folks who are just plain curious. From princes to paupers, libraries are a great equalizer and emancipator. In this new environment, we are all students. Libraries — both physical and virtual — are the places where we learn, discover old truths and synthesize new knowledge.
… [L]ibraries have moved beyond being mere repositories for shelf after shelf of printed materials, as valuable as that function is. They are gateways to a dynamic world of information and the manner in which that information is collected, presented and used is as important as the information itself.
(From Why libraries are relevant in the Google age by Patricia Iannuzzi, posted in the Las Vegas Sun on April 15, 2013)
John the Librarian 