...a patron came up to check out, and during the time I was taking care of them, they mentioned that they used to be able to keep track of books that they were interested in or had already read...B and I both commiserated with her over the fact that with our new system we could no longer do that. When suddenly, out of my wondering mouth these words popped out..."Well", I said, "I can't believe I'm even going to suggest this, but you could always open up a del.icio.us acct. and keep track of the books you were interested in that way...". Her response? She made a funny face and replied, "Huh, I want YOU (i.e the library) to do that for me!".
Two important things happened during that conversation. I realized that some of this "stuff" is starting to coalesce in my feeble brain re: 2pt0, AND, maybe more importantly, it was brought home to me that people still want us (read libraries) to provide the information they want/need WITHOUT PUTTING OUT THE EFFORT THEMSELVES! To me that means that many of our patrons still come into the physical space that is our library expecting US ( the warm bodies) to find the answers for THEM. Alot of them, like myself, are still kicking and screaming when it comes to all this whizbang stuff on the internet...
My "breakthrough" today, if you wish, which was figuring out how to actually create tags for different sites and deposit them on del.icio.us, came after many, many hours over the last several weeks, on my own time of trying to sift through all of the 2pt0 info to date that has been presented to us. I feel that there are still countless people out there who have neither the desire nor the time to learn this stuff. The wave of the future ??? I'm not sold yet.
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2 comments:
great anecdote. i read something the other day that said that while the web gives everyone greater access to information, it always has been, and still is, the business of libraries to sort through that info, organize it and help folks evaluate it.
as far as keeping track of books you read, check out LibraryThing, coming up next week. you'll have another thing that you might find yourself unexpectedly suggesting.
bc
Good story. I wonder though, maybe in 5 years, LibraryThing and the like will be the way email is now, where almost everyone uses them, and we offer Click! classes in them. OTOH there will always be people who want us to do things for them. (Witness how many times a day we answer "What's my PIN?")
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