According to John Blyberg's recent post "Four Little Octets" a strong composite tenet of Library 2.0 is "a set of attitudes that are less constrained by convention and more motivated by collaboration, empowerment, and hospitality." This sounds very motivating and inspiring, but the truth is, i have to come up with an insightful response. Convention is... a little vague. What and how is convention defined? i wanted to make sure i knew what i was about, so i looked it up. According to Funk & Wagnalls Standard Comprehensive International, convention is defined as: general consent, or something established by it; precedent; custom; rule, etc. Obviously there are commonly shared "conventions" when it comes to library service, but it is my belief that this word does not operate linearly.
Is the internet now a convention? How long precisely does it take for a practice to become common place and even an expected outcome of reference service? i want to believe libraries the world over are motivated by collaboration, empowerment and hospitality. If they were not they wouldn't make their millage. i thus proport that those attitudes are a given. What doesn't immediately make a lot of sense is: what is an attitude which espouses being "less constrained by convention"look like?
So again, how long? If we assume as Blyberg supposes that the internet gave rise to a revolution in library service which has only very recently been recognized as such, and if we assume the internet didn't really get off it's feet until 1994, we could easily surmise that a convention can come into being in less than 13 years. So, about a decade. Well, actually, that presupposes that the internet is in fact, a convention. But if it wasn't, i'm not at all sure what Blyberg is arguing. So if we round that down to a decade, and also suppose that most "modern" (i use the term loosely) libraries are or soon will be internet dependent you arrive at... yes, the internet must in point of fact be a convention.
Except if we go back to the composite tenet of Library 2.0, the attitude we're looking for is one in which we are less constrained by convention. Uh-oh. I smell a problem brewing. What we're looking for is a library service that isn't limited to those which are internet dependent. Yet, the alternative is what? The past. Card and CD-ROM catalogs and research that took weeks instead of hours (yes, i realize these sentences are fragments Amber). Obviously, despite its novelty reminisce-quotient, no one wants to go back to those days. But... we have yet to uncover a new platform by which to jump beyond our present methods of providing service. So... what then IS our goal here? Find new ways to utilitze old technology? We do that all the time--software is only as good as the way in which it was conceived to be used in. For example: most people utilize more than just one piece of software when they build a website. You can't create images that will do what you want in a program like Frontpage or Dreamweaver, but you also can't create code that'll function as a java script in say Adobe Photoshop. When someone goes to make a website, they'd probably be utilizing both types of software. Not because they were told to. It's just the logical conclusion.
So what is the logical conclusion to the convention of the internet? How do we move beyond the tether of the world wide web and the Internet 2? Some people are saying SmS and yes, text messaging has been used and abused very affectively in Japan for many years. But is it the natural next step? No. i would argue that while we exist in the convention of the internet, until we slip upon that eureka-like moment of designing a new technology or creative design to base library service on, Library 2.0 is dependent on the internet. Just knowing that we're dependent, as Blyberg seems to suggest here, isn't enough. Would AACR2's natural next logical step actually be RDA if we were trying to think beyond the internet? We're not all of us visionaries but we can learn as much as possible about current trends and experiment with what other's have found successful. No one's saying we shouldn't be looking to the future, but falling back on a convention doesn't necessarily equate failure to change and grow.
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3 comments:
I found John Blyberg’s arguments to be quite compelling. Notwithstanding the truth in his words, Library 2.0 is but one of many examples going back to the industrial revolution, if not before, of people interacting with, adapting to (or trying to adapt to), and then changing, or introducing (new) technology. How this interaction occurs and whether the interaction results in successful outcomes and efficiencies is also a field that has been studied for many years, as technologies come and go and are replaced by ‘new’ ones. The only seeming constant is change and the people who must adapt (or not), in some fashion, to the change. As I have said elsewhere, successful change is about people, people, people.
Technologies—whether they are Web 2.0 or something else—must be guided by the philosophies and values of people and the institutions they create and manage. As Blyberg points out in the following statement, the so-called “Business 2.0” plays a key role re: Library 2.0. I agree.
“Ultimately, if the power goes out and the laptop batteries die, we will be left with a profoundly different library. Certainly the one we hope to build here in Darien will reflect a set of attitudes that are less constrained by convention and more motivated by collaboration, empowerment, and hospitality. The first two of those virtues clearly come from Web 2.0, while the third reflects commitment to what many call Business 2.0.”
Note: please ignore my 2 deleted "comments"--I was trying to correct an error in the original posting and just decided to replace it instead.
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