Collection Development for My Random Life.

My Maverick Bar: A Search for Identity and the “Real Work” of Librarianship | In the Library with the Lead Pipe.

My colleague Kim has written a great reflective piece on what it is to be an academic librarian today. Her personal take is to connect libraries with Knowledge. Yes, Knowledge with a capital “K”.

“I see no work in librarianship more real than the collection, protection, and dissemination of Knowledge, and the empowerment of others in means to acquire it”

For me, I feel that librarians would fine great value in undertaking more deep reflection like this. I have heard more often then I would like to hear that there is no need for theory in librarianship… that there is no such thing as a philosophy of librarianship. I think to some degree we, as a profession,  have lost sight of what it means to be a librarian and what it means to do the work of a library. Instead of simply the management of resources, personnel, access points and budgets as the constraining influences which provide the direction a library should take, we definitely should dig deep and figure out what the purpose of library is, and should be, even if this goes against the prevailing thought of “keeping up appearances” or “return on investment”. Not only should we make libraries relevant… or perhaps Relevant (with capital “R”), we also need to make libraries meaningful… er… Meaningful.  This Meaning is not only to the individual patron, but to the community, society at large, as well as the profession and discipline of librarianship. One of the only ways I know to tap into that is to be reflective and truly philosophical in order to provide the truest insight into the direction of a library and the meaningfulness of the work and activities that occur within its purview.

Kudos to Kim for a great post.

I spent the day at the first part of a conference titled – Next Generation ILS: Mashed-up, Fried or Half-baked? It was a great opportunity to talk about how we integrate library services and the interfaces and features we have in libraries. Here are my take aways so far:

• We should throw out “integrated” and replace it with interchangeable or inter-operable. (i.e. we are able to pick and choose from vendors and/or open source each features we want — circ, cataloging, opac, etc. — and plug it where needed)
• The “next generation ILS” is more about new modes of thinking not necessarily new technology. We need to examine new paradigms and dissect old ones.
• Open source is not the cure-all or be-all. It helps but the risks and cost are almost the same as going with a vendor.
• Frustration with ILS systems is common among many libraries  — we need to be talking among ourselves more and perhaps developing common tools/solutions and not waiting for a vendor to do it for us.
• More than a few of us (including yours truly) said to blow up the OPAC completely.

There has been some really good discussions at this conference. Though there is a decent cross-section of library types and librarians represented, I think it would be helpful to have a representative from every department in a single library there to see the organization impact in a more holistic way. Maybe some of that will come about tomorrow. I will try to report back on that. Otherwise a great conference and on-going conversation so far.

The NY-Times has an article about “steampunk fashion” the mixing of the old and new technology (think the guts a fancy computer set in a nicely finished wood housing) –

Steampunk Moves Between Two Worlds – New York Times

I wonder if libraries are the ultimate in steampunk because they mix the old (books) with the new (computers and databases)…. thoughts?