23.20 Say it, don’t prepare it. And say it as a cartoon

Many Library 2.0 ponderers wax eloquent about getting their presence in MMORPG’s, and if this guy can do his talk show in the MMORPG of Halo2, why not? But I’m not entirely sold on the idea that the social MMORPG’s are really the “next Internet.” They are proprietary, hard to search, and seem a poor substitute for a walk along the C&O Towpath when the Virginia Bluebells are in bloom.

A couple of things libraries might take from MMORPG’s: (1) Spontaneous communication can be compelling: MMORPG users go on the web (their game) and every word and action they experience is new, in real time. (2) Avatars are good. In an MMORPG, your character is an avatar. Even the help can come from an avatar. People don’t seem to object to interacting and learning from avatars. Perhaps Dewey the Fox and Zoedoodle have bright futures in our 2.0 world.

23.21-23 The Present of Libraries: 3 things from Web 2.0 about organization

Many Library 2.0 ponderers in the blogs speak of the future of libraries, and that’s the direction to look for sure. They speak of how technology will change our missions, our tools, and our organizations. With the caveat that in meeting LCPL’s mission, we need not so much to change it as to recommit to it, I do have some sympathy with the idea that as collaboration, openness, and user-focus become more possible due to technology, we must take advantage of the strengths of these tools. I hope we can apply lessons from library 2.0 to the here and the now.

23.21: Collaborate. Now.

Blogs, wikis, flickr, tagging -- all those tools in the Web 2.0 awards - collaboration is the most easily identified common thread. For me, what I try to remember is that collaboration towards a common goal is what teams are made of. And LCPL has good teams all over the place. If the 2.0 world of collaboration is going to make things better, we need to keep in mind that as teammates work together, expertise and responsibility become shared, and every one becomes a leader. The more of that, the better.

23.22: Make it transparent

I wrote earlier that radical transparency is major shift in perspective, and I’m not putting my SSN on the web (or even my Horizon record). But as a professional practice, transparency has the potential to cut off the oxygen of many of the most pernicious practices in business organizations globally. When processes and decisions are in the open, there are no fiefdoms, no robbing Peter to pay Paul, no vindictiveness, no private agendas, no prejudice. And focus on how to explain, spin, and portray initiatives is replaced by focus on the initiatives themselves.

Utopian? Well sure -- but it seems a bir more grounded to be Utopian about the potential of transparency in organizations that to be Utopian about the potential of say, a gaming console or of flickr.

Of course, as AskAway shows, transparency does require respect… courage… candidness ... and shared commitment. But if we collaborate fully, those are things we’ll learn.

23.23: And it’s all about … the patron

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?

Thing 22: Ebooks

As the person who invented "Ebooks Week at Rust Library" I think this one is just a little unfair. Like every ref person in LCPL (and many circ and YS staff also) I have helped many a user create their netlibrary account, as well as help them learn to use Overdrive, Tumblebook Library, Gale Reference Library, and Learning Express (which are really interactive versions of their books, and therefore closely aligned with ebooks).

The ebooks that are most popular in LCPL are either best-best seller types in Overdrive, and tech/academic/business/computing titles in Netlibrary. The early adapters to ebooks are in tech/academic/business/computing, but that may also be because we don't own the material they are seeking in print, and they're just displaying the "platform agnosticism" that the millenial generation is known for. And our "agnostics" are millenial, genX, boomer and greatest, judging from people who ask to know more about our ebook offerings.

A shout out, too, to some of our databases that are full of text books, though they are not listed as ebook sources. History Resource Center US, History Resource Center World especially included thousands of full books in their primary sources tabs. Take a look sometime! And read an ebook today :) (or, you know a print one, because we are platform agnostic).

Two Bluebirds, a podcast poem

They roost first, then bolt on their fast wings
Churr churr lee she sings ah at last spring
Their perch-to-perch sally
I wish you could all see
Yourselves, or by using podcasting