Comments on: Looking beyond the technolust

By: Mick Jacobsen

Mick Jacobsen — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 18:04:35 +0000

I am glad I provided some food for thought Meredith. Good call on the use of the word Luddite, I am sorry that it made the post difficult to read, I should probably have used that term less. Thanks for wading through that uncomfortable word because what you wrote very much exemplifies what I was trying to get at.

By: Meredith Farkas

Meredith Farkas — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 23:12:43 +0000

@Jude – I guess I may define Luddite differently than you do. I see it as someone who is against technological progress. Not everyone necessarily needs a computer in their life and not seeing the need for one doesn’t necessarily equate to being against technological progress. And when I see someone who is afraid of a certain technology, I usually see them being afraid of other “new” things that have nothing to do with technology. I think it’s important to look at what’s behind their fear or disinterest rather than simply dismissing them as being anti-tech.

@Roman – at my library, we do a lot of knowledge-sharing, but it’s all done in ways that are much more ephemeral, like through email, scraps of paper at the reference desk, and through simply talking to each other. So the problem was more of what Deborah described where people just didn’t have the time and it wasn’t as big a priority as other things they needed to do. We’re a small and pretty close-knit group, so sharing is very much a part of our culture.

@Dan – right on! It’s all about choosing the things that will work for your population, not about worrying that you’re missing the boat on some hot technology. When a large number of our distance learners were still on dialup, screencasting was not a good solution for providing instruction, no matter how “HOT” it was. Now, nearly all patrons are on high-speed, so it’s become a more viable option.

By: Deborah Fitchett

Deborah Fitchett — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:53:21 +0000

Roman, I suspect not so much not wanting to share, but not having time to sit down and document what one’s just done, because one’s too busy doing the next thing. At least that’s been the main problem with the internal wiki at my library – it is now gaining traction, but mostly in the areas where people have a real need to share instructions etc with other people.

By: Dan C

Dan C — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:31:41 +0000

Bravo for this post (and so close to baby time!)

What I find most annoying or disconcerting is the that blanket (as you say) fundamentalism that pervades much of the tech dialogue. There’s too much of the “See what this Library did with [x product]! It’s great! What are YOU doing about it?” And that product may mean bupkes to my library patrons.

One of the more frustrating times was at a regional SLA meeting with a presentation by the one of the biggies in 2.0. He talked about all the new social software out there we HAD to be using and thinking about, and as an example, he showed his teenage children’s MySpace pages.

Most of us were thinking, “We’re all corporate librarians. Why are you giving us this completely irrelevant example and then telling us we MUST use this software?” If anything it turned most of us off to the idea.

I’m a firm believer in most social networking tools, but I’m even more firm in my beliefs that not everything is gonna be used and make life easier. Second Life? Not for all my remote patrons who can barely access the internet, let alone have the disk space for that. Some future iteration of virtual reference? Sure.

By: Roman

Roman — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 20:30:03 +0000

Your experience with the library staff wiki was interesting to read. I wonder, though, if the problem was not that people had to invest time they didn’t have into learning a new tech tool (though that could be part of the explanation). It is my opinion that too many academic libraries have a culture of not sharing and not collaborating – I absolutely agree that wikis are a great tool for sharing and collaborating, but not even this great system built exactly for that purpose will override the general desire to do things on your own. I’m not trying to be overly critical or cynical; librarians just tend to be DIY types, and proud of it, and that is sometimes good and sometimes a stumbling block.

By: Jude

Jude — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:29:04 +0000

I like the word Luddite perhaps because, even though I’m such a techie myself, I still find myself resisting technology. It took me 6 months of reading about delicious before I finally signed up for an account and became a proselytizing fanatic. I signed up for Writely before it became Google Docs, but I never used it. But in the last six months, I’ve managed to turn myself into a Google Docs fiend. I like to take people from where they are to where they can be. Not everyone is receptive, but I understand that because *I’m* not always receptive either. But what else can you call someone like the secretary I knew in the 1970s who was so afraid of the sophisticated IBM Selectric technology that she had never learned to change a typewriter ribbon (even though you just popped in a cartridge)? What else can you call someone who refuses to purchase a computer for home use because they see no value to computers? They’re Luddites through and through.