Steven Cohen commented on my post yesterday about Skype and my husband:
I’m just wondering why it matters if librarians hear about new techie devices before or after others do. The point is that we do hear about them and share them with our colleagues. That is what collaboration is all about and is one of the main reasons why I publish Library Stuff and read weblogs. To share and to be shared with. It’s not about being first. It’s about what you do with the information once you have it. Be the librarian. Share.
Couldn’t agree more Steven. I was not saying that it matters who knows what first. This isn’t a race. What matters is that we hear about it at all. It was the Skype discussion that made me realize that my husband might have some useful stuff to offer on my blog to librarians since he is pretty up on all things tech. I wouldn’t presume to recommend technologies that I don’t know enough about, and he has used a lot of things that I haven’t. And perhaps when he finds something cool (whether it is before or after someone else has blogged about it) he can write about it. It’s not about Steven Cohen or Adam Farkas or Jenny Levine being first. It isn’t a pissing contest. Everyone has something to offer to the blogosphere, right?
I love how quickly new technologies can become part of our vocabulary in the library blogosphere. All it takes is one post. And in a blogosphere as small as ours, you can really see how the seeds of ideas form and germinate as they move through the blogosphere (from a simple mention to using it in real library applications). It’s so cool!
