losing ground

[Margaret F. Riley]

At 06:20 AM 6/14/96 -0700, Sara Weissman/Morris Cty Library wrote:

>  For nearly *anything* new you want to try in a library, try this:
>  "We want to try this for six months...what are your concerns?" People
>  react less phobically to a trial than to what they might perceive,
>  correctly or not, as an edict

This is a great concept to use in introducing new things to staff at all
levels.  Think not just of the service to your users, but prepare for the
impact on the staff.  Managing information services these days needs
as much high-touch as it does high-tech to work properly.

> "It's tough to get 20 years into what you think
>  has been a good and productive career and suddenly be told you don't
>  know what you are doing because you don't know the Internet." I was
>  not prepared for the audible gasp that shot across the room...*many*
>  of the people sitting there felt precisely that. My experiences as
>  trainer have led me to incorporate Toffler (Future Shock turns out to
>  have been about the Internet!) and Galbraith on learning styles into
>  my course at Rutgers. I want my students to be comfortable knowing
>  that they can learn nearly anything when/as they have to, for that
>  I think is the rising tide of the profession. (Thump! jumps off sopabox.)

Actually, I think you should be standing behind the lecturn longer and 
making more of a point of this.  In my current work, I am doing a lot of
training of librarians and others.  One idea that I am pursuing in my 
training seminars is equating the Internet to the other information technologies
and systems we have been introduced to in the past 10 years.  I remember
getting those first CD-ROMs at MIT, the first LAN, learning WordPerfect
for the first time (in 1989...), and Dialog searching.     

We did it before, we can do it again!   I dunno, maybe some cheerleaders
and a few pep rallies would help us out.

:-)

Margaret

Margaret F. Riley
Internet Consultant			The Riley Guide
3726 Nimitz Road			http://www.jobtrak.com/jobguide/
Kensington, MD  20895-1700		mfriley at erols.com
(301) 946-1917			mfriley at ultranet.com
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"The Guide to Internet Job Searching" by Margaret Riley,
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 April 1996.   1-800-323-4900