Saturday, July 28, 2007

Old Librarian Fades Into the Sunset

Whew! Just read all those perspectives in #15 (were there only 5?!) and am thoroughly impressed with the forward thinking and ability to see the future by the authors. Everything is moving so fast and I'm not sure that we can grasp what we have before it is gone and something new and better (?) is in it's place.

Yes, we must be more open and accessible to all of our customers---including the ones who don't even realize that we are there---but at the cost of losing the human interaction? I hope not and don't really think that that will happen---except for some people who think that they can do it all with just a click.

I hope that librarians will always be able to THINK, the one skill that is being lost in the rush to find the information (any will do---it's on the web, it must be OK) and move quickly on to the next thing.

Hopefully HCPL will not dive into what's new just because that is what it is. We must consider where we are, literally, and where, not the rest of the world but our customers, current and future, want us to be. I sure don't want to be the one to have to balance THAT scale.

It's all so easy, point and click---but who will point us to the best services that we can provide? Exciting? Yes. Challenging? Most certainly. Daunting? Hoo, boy!

Number 14 may turn out to be the thorniest of all. Good Luck to us all.

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