Blog of Controversy!

It first became evident to me in “library school”, and now it is ever-present in my professional life. I must admit I feel like somewhat of a traitor and whistleblower in telling everyone about this, but here it goes.

Who can name what the number one duty of a librarian is? I can. I bet mine is different than yours. I should warn you: If you don’t want to know the real answer and be forced to face the truth that you have buried deep down so you won’t have to think about it, then you should not continue reading this blog.

The real, honest, and truthful number one duty of a librarian is to ensure that there are librarians and jobs to pay them. Ask any librarian and they are filled with excuses and reasons why their profession is vital to society. Hell, they can probably even regurgitate an argument for why we need to provide “Snakes on a Plane” to our patrons. We protect free speech and access to information. We facilitate education and societal enrichment. We preserve culture for reference and future study. All of these might be true, but it seems more and more to me that they are benevolent side effects to the real aim of the profession.

If all of these were the true reasons, it would be enough and we would also be responsible enough to understand that sacrifices must be made to ensure that we reach our aims. But it’s not. Instead we keep statistics, find ways to inflate them, and get rid of items that don’t facilitate their growth. Programs are held simply to increase the number of bodies that enter the library. Drives are held with marketing campaigns to increase membership whether or not the people actually ever come in the doors at all. All of this so we can show how much people like us and use us. All of this to justify our budgets and make sure the money will be there for us next year. All of this to make sure that we can keep on doing these same things in order to keep in getting more numbers in order to keep on requesting more money. Why else is funding and legislation a higher priority of the ALA than intellectual freedom?

Now, the argument can be made that these things are necessary to make sure that money is there enough to allow us to fulfill those “real reasons” I mentioned above. I don’t buy it. If that were the case then the reasons themselves would be argument enough. Why the constantly increasing need for positions and financing? Why all the money spent telling people how great we are? I’ve told you why: Because we want to keep getting paid.

Feel free to tell me how wrong I am; but limit the swearing in your personal insults please.

One small step for man...

I recently answered a question on one of Woody Evans' blogs with this statement:
"I'm all about growing in leaps and bounds though; any other type of growth is just falling behind at this point for the profession."

Of course this got me to thinking.
For libraries, or perhaps any other profession, how much is wasted in growing incrementally? How many libraries purchased Betamax or Laserdisc media only to regret it sooner rather than later? I personally owned a portable minidisc player... and I'm just now coming to grips with the shame. The world is rife with digital media formats that can no longer be accessed because their technology is dead. So this makes me ask, when should we migrate? The cost of staying current is immense, but is it higher than never changing?

Is it just the fate of libraries to lag behind trends due to cost considerations? Is this what we've learned from 8 tracks and HDDVDs? And on that note, is it worth getting blue ray dvd players until they are as common as the old ones? Otherwise, don't we, by default, limit the patrons we serve to those who can afford the high end technologies?

So, which is better? To take technological risks and hope you guessed right, or to stick to your guns until the technology is so commonplace that your patrons demand it? In my opinion, this is much like everything else: a little mix of both is what is needed. Gamble occasionally on those things that would really provide a benefit (and cross your fingers hoping that others will follow suite), but also wait until other technologies have been thoroughly tested.
But how do we know which ones are worth the gamble? The same way the pros do- research.

And let me wrap up by reminding everyone of one thing: We should use technology to solve problems, not to make things shiny. (this of course, is professionally speaking. Personally, shiny is good enough.)

Tried and True

I have been looking at this program called Scratch lately, thinking that maybe it is the future of internet based gaming. Games created by users for users. Sounds nice, right? Perhaps this will open gaming in new directions with truly original and fun games that business insiders haven't thought of yet. Does it? No, unfortunately not.

It's made for kids to program with, but the "non programming language savvy" user can find it a lot of fun too. The problem is that the games people are creating are nothing new. Users are copying formats of games they already know. There are many versions of Pong, Brickles, and Mazes instead of fresh ideas. Perhaps the ability to copy and tweak other members projects leads to this, but I must say I'm disappointed. Now, the graphics are limited and the majority of the users are still quite young, but I was hoping for some new ideas in gaming. Where are they?

I might be wrong. There are 7736 projects and I haven't checked them all. Someone show me the way. User generated content is limited to the creativity of the users... what does this say about the future of gaming? Oh well, I guess it only takes a few visionaries to change everything.