[Web4lib] Future of libraries

[Dan Lester]

Sunday, July 6, 2008, 10:54:41 PM, you wrote:

> To pick up Joyce's point on objectives, I think my job is to provide
> information for my patrons and to help them use it (as it always has been),
> but I expect to be talking about what to provide and how to provide it for
> my entire career--say, the next thirty years.

And it has been exactly so for the last forty years as well.  I look
forward to the next 30 years of change, though as a user rather than
as an active librarian (not that I expect the genes to disappear).

> The conversation about change in libraries may be old, but the details of
> what's possible today have changed significantly in the last decade...and
> will change some more tomorrow and every day after that.

Yes, the change in the world is constant.  Now y'all can deal with all
the forthcoming technologies, decide whether to mess with twitter and
ning and Second Life as parts of your jobs, or as parts of your
personal lives, or at all.  Of course you'll have dozens or hundreds
of new "toys" and "possibilities" that we've not yet imagined and
you'll make a few mis-steps as well as develop a host of new and
valuable ways of dealing with information.

As to the "groundhog day" type of scenario, I'm reminded of the
expression that particularly fit some 20 years ago with different
types of 5.25 inch floppies.  Were they SSDD, DSDD, or some other
variety?  And the same with early 3.5 inch floppies, in several
varieties.

Of course the relevant type was what you'll continue to deal with
forever, not SSDD, but DSDD.  Not Same Stuff Different Day, but
Different Stuff Different Day.  That's what has kept me going for over
40 years in library technology, the fact that there IS something
different EVERY day.

dan

-- 
The road goes on forever and the party never ends. REK, Jr. 
Dan Lester, Boise, ID