social media | emerging trends | libraries
According to Andy Carvin, DOPA has just died in the Senate. From his blog – “The end of 2006 also marks the end of the current congressional session
in the House and Senate, closing the door on the Deleting Online
Predators Act.”
I don’t know a whole lot about politics – is this true? I certainly hope so!
Are you a web programmer? Then you might just be interested in this job ad at my library. If you’re curious, feel free to ask me more about the job!
From SmartMobs… Reuters has opened a news bureau inside Second Life. News.com has more: “Adam Pasick, a Reuters’ media correspondent based in London, will serve as the news organization’s first virtual bureau chief, using a personal avatar, or animated character, called “Adam Reuters,” in keeping with the game’s naming system.”
“As strange as it might seem, it’s not that different from being a reporter in the real world,” Pasick said. “Once you get used to it–it becomes very much like the job I have been doing for years.”
Wow – that’s one interesting job, huh? But did you see what the correspondent said? “…it’s not that different from being a reporter in the real world.” I’d have to guess it’d be the same for libraries!
Have you considered having a digital presence within Second Life?
Stephen Abram was the keynote at the Missouri Library Association conference. Here are some notes from his session.
Stephen’s job – looking around corners.
Showed Pew 2020 predictions…
Aside – California elected an action figure as governor… (Abram is REALLY funny – make sure to hear him speak!)
Libraries unfetter information because we have library staff.
Libraries do How and Why questions well – focus on those. Also community and learning questions.
Focus on local info – gather all local government websites for instance…
What do Libraries do best?
Don’t teach how to read – that’s a very low level of awareness. Teach how to learn, how to discuss, etc.
Six times more people have library cards than drivers licenses
Discussed a huge genome/leukemia database that doesn’t use boolean – it is accessed via a gaming console…
Aside… Stephen’s cousin wrote Everquest…
community, learning, and interaction – the top three reasons why people use libraries – not books. Example – when an old person checks out a book, it’s the interaction that’s important…
95% of college students have Facebook accounts.
Facebook – a sustainable social network for life.
First build the big grassy space and watch where everybody walks. THEN build the sidewalks.
People became extremely quiet as Stephen started on future always-on, smartphone, etc stuff… they were a bit blown away by what’s just down the road.
blinkx.tv… thousands of tv shows within 5 minutes of being broadcast…
You HAVE TO play with these new things to figure them out. You also have to allow this play time.
“If you’re not the lead dog, the view never changes.”
If you didn’t see this, you should REALLY go read the article (from American Libraries Online; discovered via Michael Casey).
From the ALA article: “… LC Director for Workforce Acquisitions Bill Ayers said 200 employees had taken advantage of a voluntary retirement incentive for librarians who had become “very comfortable” with traditional librarianship and chose not to gain new technological skills. As a result, he said, the library’s full-time staff dropped by 130 between FY 2004 and 2005.” {emphasis mine}
And this quote: “… LC is preparing a workforce transformation initiative to help current employees upgrade their abilities while attracting new staff with digital-era skills.” {emphasis mine}
Did you catch that? This is a great (yet unfortunate) example of the odd digital divide in libraries and among library staff. There are library workers who are capable of gaining “new technological skills” … and there are library workers who for one reason or another “chose not to gain new technology skills.” And LC is being very kind – they’re training people who want to learn, and providing other options for those who do not want to learn.
I’ve been reading up on change management and thinking about how that affects technology change in libraries, and this example fits in well with what I’ve learned so far. Some people simply don’t want to change – they are comfortable with their jobs and their job duties, they might even think the way they do things is The Best Way to do them – so why in the world would they want to change?
I like the pro-active way the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County is dealing with technology change and training with their Learning 2.0 / 23 Things training program. But also – at some point – library managers might need to treat technology skills like any other skill – it’s part of your job, you need to do it or find another job. That seems harsh, but really… would you hire someone to do telephone reference if they had no phone skills, and refused to learn phone skills? Would you hire a cataloger if they couldn’t catalog and didn’t want to learn anything about AACR2? Probably not.
It should be the same with technology skills, which right now are changing pretty rapidly. Think about it.