David Lankes on libraries, librarians and the future of them both. I found his talk to be idealistic and inspiring but is it realistic?
One of the things that came out strong is the need for innovation in libraries and for librarians to be innovative. I agree but we still need to work out how to innovate. We need to be flexible and willing to change, and adapt. But how do we do this?
Lankes presents predictions and encourages us to think in innovative fashion but do we know how to do this? This seems to be something lacking in our professional. How do we think about the future? How do we predict the future? How to work with those predictions and change society?
Change society. That is a scary idea. And very idealistic. Can we really do this? Well, we already have done it in some respects -- the idea of libraries have changed society through history -- lending to the masses, learning for all, the people's universities. So how do we do this now?
How do we change our catalogs? How do we shift our focus from things, artifacts to knowledge, knowledge creation, and serving and changing society?
Lankes talks (in the questions session) about a need to talk to our members and use outcomes based asssessment to start changing library. This is structured and practical but hard to do, hard to put time, effort and money into. Can we make this a priority? It is hard to do that when we have lots of other pressing things to do.
2 comments:
True. The "how" is always the hardest part.
I was reminded of a quote from Walden by Henry David Thoreau: "If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."
As with your point, how do we put a foundation under the vision? I don't have an answer either. But it is important to have an idea of what to build before drafting the blueprints. There's a place for Lankes' "idealistic and inspiring" message, but it's only the first step.
As you say, it might be hard to make this a priority when we're all just trying to keep our heads above water.
The question we must ask is not the cost of change, but the cost of not changing. If we become so fixed on our current tasks that we put off innovation as a luxary, we will find that those tasks may well become valueless and no longer supported by our communities. Being obsolete is costly indeed.
You are absolutely right that an inspirational speech is only a first step. Change is hard. But if we see it as low priority or a luxary, then we never get past the speeches.
Of course you folks are engaged in the next step. Having the conversation. For that I very grateful.
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