Comments on: Building 21st century librarians AND libraries

By: SysLib

SysLib — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:51:07 +0000

“The systems librarians may not have time to maintain this stuff, but they may not feel they can’t trust the public services librarians to take the ball and run with it.”

My 2 cents: Usually it is the network administrators, not systems librarians, who have control issues that circumvent the integration of technology.

Systems librarians aren’t always network administrators and often have little influence on what goes on in that department. Some are mostly ILS managers, web opac designers, e-resources managers, etc.

By: Karlos Waterman

Karlos Waterman — Sun, 16 Mar 2008 01:38:02 +0000

I am an Florida State 2007 MLIS grad. At the graduate level the school still has a split personality between “traditional” librarianship and information studies with a good dose of technology. The undergrad program is strongly oriented toward information technology and as those students go for their master’s, the grad program will finally shift.

Students who want to experience Second Life and learn to write strict XHTML with CSS will find sufficient courses to equip themselves for 2.0 anything.

By: NextGenLibrarian

NextGenLibrarian — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 22:48:14 +0000

In public libraries, this organizational problem between techs and public services librarians is even more pronounced. We started chat reference at our library, and because we serve a rural community, a lot of our features (such as the chat widget) do not work properly. Not only am I not able to fix the tech issues (due to my lack of “computer admin” privileges) but I am told that either the IT department is too busy, or that the issues aren’t a big priority. I didn’t learn much 2.0 from library classes, but a librarian at my internship emphasized that I should get familiar. So I have, but in my current position, I am not able to really use much of what I have learned. Though I would like to become more tech-savvy (and actually have access to the library’s web design interface) I have mostly had try things on my own time outside my library.

By: Diana

Diana — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 23:28:51 +0000

I am what you call a web/reference librarian. My position started on the reference desk and morphed into the web development role when no one else at the library would take on the task.

From my experience, being “tech-savvy” is more an attitude. Although I took web design and php in library school, most of what I know I’ve picked up on my own (after all, we do know how to find the information we need!). I come from a graphic design background, and that along with my experience as a librarian gives me a very different perspective on technology that a traditional IT person. If anything, I find our views often clash, and I find no support for what I want to do in the way of online services to our community.

I’ve also started working at a local community college, where the IT support is no better. If anything, I find IT questioning the value of what we’re doing when it comes to Web 2.0 implementation.

However, when you don’t have access to a server and you have no other staff to help you, things like PBwiki and Blogger start to look real good. I figure down the road these things can be migrated to our own server, but if we wait on IT to do anything, it will never happen.

I agree with you that librarians are much more user-focused than IT people. If more librarians were willing to learn at least some HTML and CSS, I think a lot more would be achieved in helping our customers both inside and outside the library.

By: Greta

Greta — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 21:09:33 +0000

I’m also a current grad student in an LIS program, and I do worry about some of my classmates who seem to be in over their heads when it comes to even the easiest of technologies (like the classmate who didn’t know what PowerPoint was). I don’t think it’s necessary to teach yourself javascript for fun like I’m doing, but a basic understanding of how a web page works is probably not a bad idea and I don’t see anywhere near that level of competency among the people in a lot of my classes. There is a core class that is supposed to be fairly tech-focused, but it’s taught by a few different people so some students are getting a really good intro to technology and others aren’t.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:11:56 +0000

I have problems not so much with anything “2.0″ as with “flavor of the month”. In other words, the powers that be see something “sexy” – like roving librarians with headsets or tablet PCs that are expensive, unnecessary, and difficult to connect, or wanting librarians to deal with complex and ongoing public computer issues without having the proper training and/or IS backup – and then accusing them of not being able to deal with “change” because they have quite legitimate concerns. Meredith is entirely correct that the typical library org chart doesn’t work well in this new environment. I believe the two Michaels have written some LJ columns about this. We keep hearing about libraries “flattening” their organizations (another month-flavor) but they start rising very quickly again.

By: Charlotte

Charlotte — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 18:44:08 +0000

In grad school I took some tech courses, (mainly web design) and many of my classmates would tell me “I don’t know why we take these courses, in a real library setting I will leave it up to the systems person.” Grrr. Not only that I was looked at like a freak because I took more than the required tech classes. I work 2 library jobs now and in my first week in one place there was a problem with our automation system and I was asked to call the company because they were having trouble getting an answer. Well I must have said the right words because I not only talked to someone, I got the problem fixed, and ended up being the technical guru. God help me!

Long story short, the issue is twofold in pertaining to library school tech knowledge 1. schools have to be open to life long learning in the technical field and not just hot button items (blogs, wikis, etc) 2. students have to be open to learning technical knowledge and not shutting their eyes to it because they are afraid to fail.

By: Meredith Farkas

Meredith Farkas — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 16:22:50 +0000

Agreed, GenY! Wow, that’s really crazy how quickly they shifted to the opposite extreme. And library 2.0 or web 2.0 or whatever is hot now is definitely less important to teach than those “big picture” technology management skills that you need on an everyday basis at work. Sounds like FSU is still missing the boat.

By: GenYLibrarian

GenYLibrarian — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:58:57 +0000

I go to Florida State now, and it is the exact opposite extreme: Now ALL they teach is Library 2.0. Since I am a Millennial and grew up with all of this stuff, I just feel like I am wasting my time (and money) in class. I understand that not everyone is on the same level, but there needs to be a healthy balance between tech skills and traditional library skills.

By: Meredith Farkas

Meredith Farkas — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 12:40:20 +0000

Annie, I said when I see major academic libraries running things like that, not all libraries. There are lots of libraries that simply don’t have people with the tech skills or the finances to implement these tools, and those are libraries for which things like PBWiki and Blogspot are perfect for. I’m a huge advocate of hosted products for libraries that don’t have any access to a server. But there are plenty of libraries that have both tech-savvy staff and money who have to sit on their hands because the process to actually get approval to install something on a server (even just to experiment with it) is so circuitous. And that’s who I was speaking to, not the sort of library you probably work at.

Other than the server space (which costs surprisingly little each year), everything I’ve implemented for my library has not cost a thing. MediaWiki is open source. Wordpress is open source. We don’t have a big budget for tech stuff, and we’ve managed to do quite a lot by using open source applications. But if you don’t have access to a server, your only option is hosted stuff, and that’s ok, but control is something many libraries are concerned with and with hosted apps like PBWiki, you don’t have as much control. Still, I’d use it too if there was no other option and I do use it for lots of projects.

A small budget is not something that would keep me from working at a library. A change averse culture and a culture that discourages innovation through its decision-making channels would keep me from working at a library. Doesn’t sound like you have that problem. We’re fortunate these days that there’s so much we can do online without spending a dime.