About Judson

...the name of a street located several miles from where my paternal grandparents used to live. Over the years, I'd think "what a kewl name...I'll have to use that for something." JIVE is the first thing I thought that was sorta rhymey with JUDSON. :-)

May 16, 2009

The Future of Libraries..."Library 2.0"?

I think a very strong issue in librarians' minds about the 2.0 phenomena is the threat of losing power of information that is "out there." Now, I know this sounds kinda weird, maybe even drastic...but let's face it: deep within many librarians' subconsciousness is the feeling that "Oh, no - this Internet/Web/technology development is going to threaten my job, my livelihood, my profession." For those librarians who are reading this, don't fight this statement - you know it's true! How many time have we heard from a patron, while working at the Information Desk, "Oh, I'll just look it up on Google." This profession is feeling threatened by a search engine and all its permutations/transformations...including Web 2.0. Even for those professionals who think these developments are kinda kewl, there is a small, still, embedded fear. Yeah, even this young-ish, self-proclaimed quasi-hip medical/public librarian has this kernal of fear!

The bottom line is that we in the information profession need to come to terms with the changing needs of our communities and "meet" them where they're at. Face it - coming to the public library as the first source of current information is not on most people's minds. We need to REACH OUT and use tools like blogs and YouTube - this is where our people are at.

This is a stream-of-consciousness blog...and I'm at work right now trying to mentally multi-task...but I guess I sorta had to get this off my chest. Toodles till later...more to come. :-)

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