Readings for 6 November 2006
"Long Overdue: A Fresh Look at Public and Leadership Attitudes about Libraries in the 21st Century"
I found a lot of what was brought up in the survey results interesting, but not surprising. Most of our readings for both this class and another class I'm in talk about these topics. The one that I did find a bit new and surprising was that city leaders were critical of librarians. We are seen as idealistic, quiet, withdrawing, and impractical. These are images that we have to fight to get rid of, because they hurt us greatly. People who give us money have to feel that they are giving the money to someone who is responsible; although the public feels that we do a good job with the money we are given, the government officials feel like we need to be at a higher level of accounting for the funds given. Thus, a business head doesn't hurt. I have to agree with this. I would be reticent to give money to someone who didn't appear to have his head focused on the bottom line. Business training can't hurt librarians (and it could make us much more valuable, meaning higher salaries). Knowing how to market your place of employment is always good, especially when funding for your job and essential resources to perform your job well is in perpetual jeopardy.
"The Differences Between Real and Virtual Libraries" by Thomas Mann
I agree with a lot of what was said in this article. People who are intent on thinking that the digital will replace the print are mistaken; it will, rather, compliment it. Having done digitization work, I have to say that it's imperfect. A lot of the time the margins are small or the book was imperfectly bound, and that's a serious problem for creating an online PDF. But it doesn't cause problems for those who are reading the item. So, yeah, we have to keep our print copies! They don't necessarily have to be on-site (which creates another geographic limit), but we need to keep them. Some researchers are even interested in the physical creation and the metatext of an item, and a lot of the time that stuff is not or cannot be digitized. The argument could be made that the discarding of such documents is tantamount to destroying unique creations.
"Long Overdue: A Fresh Look at Public and Leadership Attitudes about Libraries in the 21st Century"
I found a lot of what was brought up in the survey results interesting, but not surprising. Most of our readings for both this class and another class I'm in talk about these topics. The one that I did find a bit new and surprising was that city leaders were critical of librarians. We are seen as idealistic, quiet, withdrawing, and impractical. These are images that we have to fight to get rid of, because they hurt us greatly. People who give us money have to feel that they are giving the money to someone who is responsible; although the public feels that we do a good job with the money we are given, the government officials feel like we need to be at a higher level of accounting for the funds given. Thus, a business head doesn't hurt. I have to agree with this. I would be reticent to give money to someone who didn't appear to have his head focused on the bottom line. Business training can't hurt librarians (and it could make us much more valuable, meaning higher salaries). Knowing how to market your place of employment is always good, especially when funding for your job and essential resources to perform your job well is in perpetual jeopardy.
"The Differences Between Real and Virtual Libraries" by Thomas Mann
I agree with a lot of what was said in this article. People who are intent on thinking that the digital will replace the print are mistaken; it will, rather, compliment it. Having done digitization work, I have to say that it's imperfect. A lot of the time the margins are small or the book was imperfectly bound, and that's a serious problem for creating an online PDF. But it doesn't cause problems for those who are reading the item. So, yeah, we have to keep our print copies! They don't necessarily have to be on-site (which creates another geographic limit), but we need to keep them. Some researchers are even interested in the physical creation and the metatext of an item, and a lot of the time that stuff is not or cannot be digitized. The argument could be made that the discarding of such documents is tantamount to destroying unique creations.
posted by Julia Faith | 2:30 PM
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