was chat, now the future

[Higgins, Caroline]

I think the best thing one can do is look at the
mission of your particular library.  What do
you want the Internet to do for your patrons?  
Provide information, solely(regardless of content), 
or do you want to act as a hub of communication,
activity, technology and knowledge?

What is the mission of your library?
What are the emerging missions of
libraries around the world?  If we can 
provide communication between a child and 
parent who are 3,000 miles apart, at no more cost
than providing that child access to a Website with
resources already in place, should we? 

I appreciate the person who wrote that
chat is a great way for people to communicate
at great distances, but is that really what 
those workstations are for?  Yes, it's
'free' but so are local telephone calls.  We
certainly don't have a bank of telephones
to provide free access for our patrons to
prepaid local telephone lines.

Perhaps we need to look at allocating our 
electronic resources to fit the priorities
of our missions.  For example, don't deny
chat room or e-mail, but use policy and proxies
and resource allocation to make a little bit of 
room for them and other non-info based tools.

A thought...we tell stories in our children's areas.
We put up exhibits and participate in 
other community enhancing activities.
Don't we?

Where will the 21st century lead us? 
Will we go kicking and screaming or will librarians at 
last be recognized as intelligent professionals as we deserve?
I feel it imperative that we not only recognize the technological
innovations that are changing the face of librarianship, but
also that we seize the opportunity they represent.
Someone recently posted a message on one
of my lists about an entire reference staff being 
eliminated (an extreme case, yes).  By placing 
too many limits on what we will 'allow', we may be 
writing our own termination notices of the future.

Please, no flames.  Just thinking out-loud
to the list.

Caroline Higgins
Supervisor of Automation
University of Houston-Downtown Library
higginsc at dt.uh.edu