It's come to my attention that no matter where you work, some sort of politics is involved. And I don't mean national, state or local politics--though these things can matter to libraries. I'm talking about the internal politics of the library, or as I see it, the traditionalists vs. the progressives.
Traditionalists are the angry "shush" types. They want you to be quiet, keep the books in perfect working order, feel that privacy is a privilege and not a right, and don't want to give people the credit and respect that they're due. They're the old guard, the people who think that the system is working now and will work forever if we just stick to it, dammit!
Progressives think that paradigms need shifting, that laughter in a library is a good thing, that what you online is none of my business, and that people, if you let them, will be good. They're creative thinkers, and they embrace technology and change.
Which do you think I am? (And frankly, like any other sort of north pole/south pole dichotomy, there is a vast spectrum of belief. No one encompasses all of either viewpoint.)
I hope it's obvious! I'm coming at this as a non-library user. When I stopped working at a library, I stopped using them as well. I still have to MAKE myself use libraries, at least in person. (I use library web resources ALL the time.) But I believe that libraries can be relevant and important again, if we understand that they HAVE TO CHANGE. Instead of viewing the Internet as an extra service, it needs to be a basic library service. It is becoming the basic source of much of the information out there, and without embracing it in ALL of its facets, we're losing the race. You'd be surprised to find that some librarians don't feel this way.
We're definitely losing the race, right now! Kelly, over at Library Diva, posed the question of blogs and libraries, and in a greater sense, the Internet in libraries. Are libraries still the BEST place to get information on what to read, when so many wonderful websites exist to help you with that? And my answer is yes, but. Only if we, as library staff, understand that to be the best place to get information and help, we need to position ourselves that way. Most of the women in my class don't (or didn't, before me) know what a blog is. But I'm guessing that blogs could be very, very important to libraries, if WE LET THEM. It might be as simple as having your reader advisory staff keep a blog, and link to other relevant blog. It might be as complicated as keeping up with many of the literary blogs out there. But resisting the technology isn't going to help anyone, at all. And even underestimating the importance of the technology could be harmful.
But I'm scary, see, because my viewpoint asks people to step outside their comfort zone. It asks older people to get over their fears of change and start to embrace it. And I'm really asking people to stop worshipping books more than they worship the patron, something that's really, really hard for some people. Yes, the library is nothing without the books. But even more, the library is nothing without the patrons. I think you'll find that a lack of patrons hobbles a library as much as or more than the shortage of materials. And what libraries are doing now--it's not exactly attracting new patrons at the speed we might like it to. We may not be repelling patrons, but we're not blazing trails, either. (I say that, even as I know that somewhere in this country, there is a library blazing trails. I want to work there! Hire me, progressive library directors!)
So--am I more dangerous to a library, or is the traditionalist? It's not a simple question, and I bet that every single person you ask will give a different answer. From where I'm sitting, it's not me.
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