Why does this matter to me?
For a number of months, I’ve been talking to, although she would probably say AT, the director of my favorite public library, Cook Memorial in Tamworth, NH about social software, remote services, and the important opportunity that they have to be forward thinking. Being small makes rural libraries nimble and able to respond to and experiment with new toys *ahem* technology in ways that larger libraries cannot, especially as more and more tools are available for free. Despite this, their battles are a bit more fundamental than those of larger institutions. Not the least of which is that library leaders do not have time to be learning about new things, they can barely keep up with the things they already know. Until something blams them over the head, they simply can’t afford the time. (In this particular case, I’m the blam. Available for hire… cheap). Fair enough, right? Can’t blame them there.
When they do want to learn, their percieved learning curve seems insurmountable to them. (I say percieved because like most things, this stuff is much tougher from the outside looking in.) Yet, this particularly exemplary librarian listens to me patiently, through veritable dissertations on the importance of OPACs (yep, as opposed to having their automated catalogs only available in-house), blogging, flickr, wikis, IM… the list gets longer everyday. Tonight, during one of these enthusiastic monologues, she stopped me:
Lichen, I understand this is cool… but why is it the business of libraries? Why is it worth my staff’s attention and time?
It’s a vital question and one that’s easily lost in the shuffle. But if we don’t answer it in ways that are clear to our consituencies, both our users and our rural counterparts, well then, we’re part of the problem.
