Or the user, or the client or the consumer. Or the taxpayer. It’s funny how the Library 2.0 literature often makes this point as if it’s novel…since I was a volunteer at Woodrow Wilson library in 1973, I have known hundreds, maybe thousands, of library people who demonstrated this every day (well every work day – we all need time off).
I love books, I but I am not a bookseller. Yes, most of what we get into people’s hands is media objects, but we are not a media-distribution outlet – businesses do that. We are here to get information (be it data, knowledge, information, entertainment or wisdom) into people hands… or heads. The format doesn’t matter – a lecture or a Babygarten or an old-fashioned hardback, it is all good. We are an idea distribution outlet, and what matters is the people we are privileged to get the ideas to.
So I can only be enthusiastic about new ways to reach our users, collaborate with them, and become a community of ideas in partnership with them. The patron is more important than the format, as the Library 2.0 gurus say.
The patron is also more important than the process. Whenever a decision is made, the question library people need to ask is: Am I putting the process ahead of the patron? There are times this has to be done, but not nearly so many times as one might think.
If we are serious about keeping the library user at the center of what we do – and pretty much all the advocates of Library 2.0 start there – let’s be serious. Look at everything we do with the user’s eyes, and work together – collaboratively and openly – to develop the means to deliver to the user the information they need.
Some say Web 2.0 leaves us no choice, that collaboration and openness are inevitable, and perhaps so. But why would we choose any other path?
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