goblin cartoons

Friday afternoon is not a great time for major career revelations.

I was talking with a coworker this afternoon about ALA. She was talking about why she’s a member, and I was talking about why I’m not. For her, ALA is a source of professional development and community. As I’ve said before, I feel I get enough professional development and community from blogs, wikis, email lists, podcasts, and talking with other library professionals (in person and via phone, email, and IM). ALA just seems irrelevant to me.

And then a thought came upon me like a dramatic prairie dog: what if there are other library professionals who don’t get their development and community solely from the internet? What if there are librarians who look to ALA for development, community, and support? What if they’re not getting everything they could from ALA? Aren’t they my community, too? What if it’s not just about me?

Oh, hell. I suddenly felt that it was my responsibility to rejoin ALA and do my best to work from within and make it the better. If not for me, then for my fellow librarians and future librarians. Which sounds really arrogant and grandiose, now that I type it out. But still, there it is.

I’m still not completely sure this is something I want to do. I know that as long as I’m not an ALA member, I’m not going to gripe about it, because unless I’m willing to join and work on it, I’ve got no right to kvetch and moan. Of course, if I do actually rejoin ALA and really get involved, I hear there’s a good chance I’ll get a pony with a monocle.

The biggest irony in Michael Gorman’s two-part blog post entitled “Web 2.0: The Sleep of Reason” (part I and part II) is that he clearly doesn’t understand how the internet (including, but in no way limited to, Wikipedia) works, or he’s willfully misrepresenting how it works in order to make his point. Whichever the case, it means that he’s not an authoritative, reliable source, and his writings on the matter cannot be trusted.

Anything else I could possibly say about his two-part essay has already been said, and much better than I could have done, by Jason Griffey, Karen G. Schneider, Jessamyn West, and Meredith Farkas.

UPDATE: Clay Shirkey has an excellent critique of Gorman’s posts here.

Here’s an assumption of mine: the majority of library professionals expect that continuing education and professional development in the field will be done through formal classes, seminars, and conferences–which cost someone (the library professional or their place of employment) money and require face-to-face, in-person attendance.

Technology and society being what they are, this isn’t as necessary as I think our profession makes it out to be. I’ve blogged before about how important I think DIY library education and development is. So, I’m seriously, monumentally impressed with the announcement of the LITA BIGWIG Social Software Showcase, a non-conference to be held during ALA’s big damn annual conference. This is exactly the kind of inventive, daredevil, democratic thing I want to (and expect to) see more of. It’s free, it’s fun, it’s a group of smart people using available technology to throw together their own educational program. Fantastic! (Note: yes, I’m mentioned in at least one of the Social Software Showcase presentations. No, that’s not why I think it’s brilliant, although I’m tickled all kinds of colors that my name is there.)

And just as I (and everyone else) was so impressed with Helene Blowers’ Learning 2.0 program, I’m equally impressed with her Learning 2.1. This is a great thing.

The free sharing of information and development is embedded in the core philosophy of libraries, so it gladdens my heart and fires my brain to see us doing more of this with each other. You really can’t stop the signal.

In my library experience, proposals for using new technology or offering new programs or services are often met with a variety of nervous, timid responses that all seem to boil down to “what if we try this and bad things happen?” My typical response to this is to say, “We’re not coordinating a space shuttle launch. This isn’t brain surgery. Nobody lives or dies by what we do.” But Royce Kitts’ wife put it much better, more succinctly: “Don’t go pissing your pants if in the end it doesn’t work.”

Because at the end of the day, how much do we really have to lose if things don’t go the way we planned?

A discussion (or was it a couple of different discussions?) on Twitter regarding ALA fees and navigating the ALA website led me to declare why I haven’t renewed my ALA membership. For one thing, ALA’s website, well, sucks. Is that really such a big deal? No, not really. ALA has already shown signs of changing with the changing times, and with Jenny Levine working for them, I’m sure their web presence will improve by leaps and bounds in no time. My other reason for not renewing my membership is a bigger problem: the cost of membership dues. As a student, joining ALA was $28, which was quite affordable when I was flush with student loan money. Now that I’m a professional, my first year would cost me $55. This is much less affordable. My second year dues would be $83, which is really not affordable. This is also assuming I don’t join any of the divisions or round tables. Actually getting involved in ALA, outside of paying the basic first year dues, would seriously compromise my ability to support my family. And to be honest, I can’t see what I would get out of being a member.

Is ALA an organization for professional development? I already get loads of professional development assistance from my coworkers and supervisors, my place of employment, and my time spent on the intarweb. Given the choice between the ALA and my blogroll, my blogroll kicks ALA up and down the street, making it cry uncle.

Is ALA a political advocacy group? I love that ALA gets into the political arena and supports causes and issues that I personally support. But so does the ACLU, and I only have to pay $25 a year to be a card-carrying member of that organization.

No, the more I think about it, the less I can find in ALA that I find worth paying my dues for.

This chatting on Twitter led to some remarks about starting our own alternative to ALA. Jokes and snarky comments morphed into somewhat serious questions of “Are you really going to do this?” to conversations of “We should definitely do this!” And so was born the Library Society of the World! It’s free to join and free to participate in. To be honest, this is sort of a lark, and I don’t take it all that seriously. On the other hand, I do take alternatives to ALA seriously. I think we already have an alternative to ALA, and it’s every library person engaging in conversations and collaboration on the internet and in other non-official ways. The Library Society of the World is just a cheeky way of formalizing that (sort of).

I encourage everyone and anyone who reads this blog to join the LSW, because…well, why the heck not? If you want to help with the wiki, email, IM, Skype or Twitter me (or call me on the phone, or talk to me in person) and ask for the password. At this point, I’m not going to post it publicly, but I’ll give it to anyone who asks nicely for it.

Champions of free information! The Library Society of the World wants you!

Karen G. Schneider is brilliant.

It is both ironic and poignant that librarians are still worrying about bibliographic control, after ceding so much of the same to the companies that now rent them journal access per annum at usurious rates, digitize their book collections into DRM obscurity, or sell them ponderous, antiquated management systems that on close inspection do little more than serve as storehouses for the metadata specific to the formats of bygone eras, bold days when we saw our central roles as defenders and curators of our cultural heritage.

We have moved from the librarian as information artisan a professional creating and using tools to manage information to the librarian as surrogate vendor, facilitating what is essentially the offshoring of thousands of years of information into private hands.

Read her whole piece at the ALA Techsource blog.

I’m big on fostering and participating in communities of likeminded people, both in person and online. Have I established that well enough already? You all know that about me, right? Right. It’s why I immediately jumped on board when Jessica started the collaborative Library Talk blog and Library Links blogroll. Sadly, Library Talk hasn’t really taken off. (Library Links also seems to have stopped growing, but I have hopes that it’s only temporary and that more people will jump on board sooner or later.)

So, if I were wearing a cap right now, I would doff it to Bill Drew, who took advantage of the improved Ning to create a Library 2.0 social networking site that is growing quickly, and fun to boot!

If you haven’t already, I encourage you to join the Library 2.0 network. And when you get there, add me to your friend list. Here’s my personal page. The librarian party continues. First round is on me.

So, do I really think public libraries are doomed? No, not really. “Doomed” is too strong a word for it. Or to be more precise, if libraries don’t change with the changing times, I think they’re doomed, but I have every reason to believe they will change. But as both a library employee and a library patron, I don’t think my local libraries are changing fast enough. Hey, I fully admit that I’m an impatient so-and-so.

That being said, I do think that libraries need to fully realize and admit that there are services that compete with ours and that some services do what we do and they do them better. Obviously, I think public libraries are really, really important, offering all kinds of important social services. I’ve said as much on this blog, many times, and I wouldn’t be a librarian if I didn’t feel it in my bones. And no, I don’t think technological toys are the be-all and end-all of library progress. But information-communication technologies are changing the ways people connect to and interact with information and other people, and libraries have to deal with this change.

This all is a rambling preamble to me pointing to this David Rothman post and saying, “What he said.”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Looks like I’m not the only one. Maybe it’s a (dare I use the word?) zeitgeist thing*.

On the very same day, Skagirlie laments that her OPAC sucks because it doesn’t do what Amazon, iTunes and LibraryThing do and Libraryman wonders why libraries don’t do what Pandora does. In the comments of her post, Maire says, “It’s just a bummer that a 3rd party has to offer something that should be intuitive.” I absolutely agree, it’s a bummer. Heck, I think it’s even worse than that.

On YouTube, people can upload and share their own videos with others. They can also collect other people’s videos, catalog videos, rate videos, and comment on videos. On del.icio.us, people can collect web pages, catalog them, and share them with others. On LibraryThing, people can organize and catalog their libraries, share them with others, start and join book discussion groups, and get recommendations for other reads. These are all free to use…just like libraries.

I’m usually not much of an alarmist, and I really hate to sound like Chicken Little, but…if libraries aren’t asking themselves “What do we provide that these other services don’t?”, we’re just begging to be kicked in the Higher Power of Lucky. If people can create and organize their own libraries and share them with each other–and do all sorts of other things to boot!–then asking them to use sucky OPACs and expecting them to learn the Dewey Decimal System isn’t just mean, it’s shooting ourselves in the collective foot. If a library’s best bet is the digital divide (”Don’t have a computer? This is the place for you!”), then when the digital divide disappears (Think it won’t? How many people do you know who don’t have a telephone or a TV?), libraries will be screwed. It’s well past the time for libraries to be dipping their toes in the water. It’s high time we dove right into this stuff. When one joe in Maine starts a killer library site, that’s the sign that the time for exploratory committees has come and gone. It’s time for action. Let’s not waste any more time talking about the great services we could be providing for people, let’s actually provide them. Forget about jam tomorrow, I want my jam today.

* That one’s for Maire.

Michelle Boule brilliantly sums up Roy Tennant, John Blyberg, and Nicole Engard:

Lip service is not the same as service!

In other words, actions speak louder than words. Don’t talk the talk if you’re not willing to walk the walk.

And y’know, as far as I’m concerned, that goes for ILS vendors and libraries. It goes for the way you treat your customers and the way you treat your employees.

So, put that in your pipes and smoke it!