virtually a librarian

There’s been plenty of talk around the Library 2.0 theme on the idea of evaluation or assessment. At Information Wants to be Free, Meredith Farkas says what she wanted to see come out of Library 2.0 was a greater focus on assessment. I certainly want to see libraries have a greater focus on assessment, too, and I want to see them publishing about it. (Particularly public libraries. We just don’t publish enough.)

Why aren’t we (libraries in general) publishing about the success (or failure) of our 2.0 projects? Why is there virtually no data to be found that quantifies some of the outcomes of 2.0 projects? We’ve been on this 2.0 bandwagon long enough for studies and assessments and evaluations to have been undertaken.  For a movement that’s intrinsically tied up with quick publishing channels like blogs and wikis, it seems strange that there is a real dearth of published studies on 2.0 projects. Why is that?

Walt Crawford had this to say in a recent post on his two blog survey books:

Maybe there’s a clear desire not to know how library blogs are doing in the real world, other than a few cherry-picked examples. I’d like to think that’s not the case. It would be unprofessional to tell people about how wonderful library blogs are, and encourage them to create such blogs, without giving them honest and broad-ranging information on what’s actually happening with such blogs.

I’d like to think that’s not the case, too. But I wonder. I wonder a few things:

• Is the lack of publishing indicative of a lack of success? (And a fear of talking about it?)
• Is the lack of publishing indicative of a perceived lack of success, a perception that might be formed because we’re not collecting the right data? (eg. How are we measuring ROI? Do we just count comments on blog posts? Or do we look at exit links, time spent on the page, holds on titles blogged about, impact on online resource usage stats…? I certainly hope all of these metrics and more are informing libraries’ evaluations of their blogs, because if we’re just relying on comments to measure user engagement, then we’re not seeing the full picture.)
• Is the lack of publishing indicative of a lack of evaluation? (And if so, why aren’t we evaluating? Because we don’t know how? Because we don’t have time? Because we don’t want to know?)
• Or, is it just that we’re not publishing about our evaluations?

I’ve got a blogging project in the pipeline at mpow. It’s germinating quite slowly, because I want to see it well planned. We want a well planned implementation, but also a well planned, multi-faceted evaluation. If it works, I want to know about it, and I want us to be able to reflect on what we did and make links to what worked. If it doesn’t work, I want to know about it just as much (if not more), because I want to be able to reflect on what we did, look for ways we could improve, and ultimately, pull the pin if that’s what we need to do.

Blogs (and all things shiny and 2.0) are just great. They’re fun for staff to work on, and have huge potential to engage our users. But none of us have time to run services that don’t work. If we don’t evaluate, we have no ability to know whether

We know that “because we always did it that way” is not a good reason to keep doing the things we’ve always done, whether they work or not. But neither should a failure to evaluate be the reason we keep on keeping on with our 2.0 services.

If you have evaluated your 2.0 service, publish about it! And if you have published, I’d love to receive some links.

A participant in a Learning 2.0 program recently posted on his course blog and to an ALIA elist about libraries’ use of free, commercial web 2.0 services. He analogises that libraries’ use of free web 2.o services like Blogger, del.icio.us, YouTube and the like is “privatisation by osmosis” and he is concerned by the lack of debate about this issue.

He’s right - there hasn’t been a great deal of debate in the biblioblogosphere, but I’m sure this is an issue that many libraries and librarians have grappled with on a local level.

There are a few points I’d like to make on this issue… But first, I should point out that I agree that (where possible) libraries should be developing infrastructure to support their 2.0 services. So, onto my stream-of-consciousness response…

Libraries as content producers

The author of “It’s the Queen of Darkness, Pal” suggests that libraries’ use of commercial providers might mean that they don’t see themselves as content producers to the same degree as they have historically:

It seems to me that libraries used to see themselves as content providers, actively providing tools for finding information. At the moment, it feels more like we have resigned ourselves to using the services of the private sector.

I’d like to suggest that libraries’ use of third party providers doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t producing content or don’t see themselves as content producers. In fact, in some ways, I think use of free third party providers can free us up to produce content, because we spend less time maintaining the back end of the systems that house the content. Indeed, libraries’ quick up-take of content-based technologies like blogs seems to me to indicate that we are very concerned with developing content.

Sure, we mightn’t want to rely on third party providers to maintain a record of our business transactions or our content for the purposes of records management. I would suggest that any library using a third party provider for any 2.0 (or 1.0) service should be exporting content for archiving in their local records repository. But I’d also suggest that a library with, for example, a blog hosted on their own server, should also be doing this.

Yes, libraries should build and host their own infrastructure for 2.0 services, but…

The author asks why libraries aren’t hosting their own web 2.0 technologies, and he also suggests an answer:

The superficial answer is, of course, that libraries don’t have the funds. The deeper underlying answer though is that, really, our society has decided that it’s information is best entrusted to and run by the private sector on an advertising funded basis.

Do we (as in society) really think our information is best entrusted to the private sector? I’m not so sure about this. I know that I personally am often a little nervous about entering or display personal information in/via web apps or tools. I think it’s more that it’s very easy to entrust our information to the private sector, and the private sector seems to be very good at providing tools that work for people. I think libraries have been so quick to use commercial web 2.0 services for exactly the same reasons as individuals have: they work and they’re easy to implement and use.

Should libraries be hosting their own 2.0 services? Absolutely! It would be awesome if, for example, a library offered a social bookmarking tool that their customers could use as an alternative to del.icio.us. But as the author of “It’s the Queen of Darkness, Pal” acknowledges, there are hurdles libraries need to jump in order to be able to do this sort of thing. It’s not just about money - we all know there are robust open source options for a lot of the technologies we’d like to implement. There are many other issues, too, which impede libraries in building 2.0 infrastructure, such as:

• lack of library staff with the technological expertise to allow for implementation and maintenance of the technologies
• the need to respond to new technologies and user demands quickly often dictates that we need to find fast solutions, and hosting the technologies locally can result in time lags between identification of demand or need and implementation - an externally hosted commercial service might be a great interim solution in instances like this
• the need to work with and within in-house enterprise architecture requirements
• cultural and organisational factors, including policy, procedures, history

Some libraries are in a position to independently develop their own Web 2.0 infrastructure. Some are in a position to work with their parent organisation’s IT services to work towards the development of such an infrastructure. But some do not fall into either of these categories.

As one response to the recent thread on this topic on the NewGrads elist pointed out, it’s technically possible to buy a domain name and host your library’s virtual services entirely separately from your parent organisation’s web presence and without any input from your local IT people. But many libraries are not in a position to do that, often for the same reasons as those listed above.

Is commercialism really an issue?

Consider the other commercial services libraries make use of every day - particularly those that involve data hosting and end-user service provision. We purchase subscriptions to online resources from third party vendors. Many libraries also use “software as a service” models for external hosting of their LMS or other systems. How do these two examples differ from, for example, delivering a blog via a free service such as WordPress? Other than the fact that the first two cost money while the latter is free, I’m not sure that there is a great deal of difference… Or is there? Is the fact that the Web 2.0 services are free an issue? Is the fact that they are mainstream (ie non-library) services an issue? How about a service like LibGuides? Where does that fit in?

Scattering the breadcrumbs

I think there’s one other very important reason that libraries use commercial Web 2.0 services rather than build our own infrastructure, and it’s a reason that means a lot of libraries will continue to use these commercial services: we’re attempting to meet our users in their own space. We’re “scattering the breadcrumbs” and placing our services where the users will see us - that is, in the spaces they inhabit. If we hosted our own services, would we be able to do this as effectively? If we created a social network space on the library’s website, we might create a space in which those users who actually come to our websites could interact with each other and the library, but we wouldn’t be reaching out to, for example, the users of Facebook who’ve never even contemplated visiting the library’s website.

Should libraries be using free, commercial Web 2.0 services?

The answer? I don’t know if there is one. Perhaps it’s that where possible, libraries should use a combination of local infrastructure or locally hosted services and commercial tools that can position us in the user’s space.

But I think what must be acknowledged is that, as it stands right now, there are some libraries for whom implementing their own locally hosted services or infrastructure is just not a possibility, or not a possibility that will be realised any time soon. For those libraries, free commercial services are their only option, if they’re to make use of Web 2.0 tools at all.

Finally…

I’m really glad that there is finally some debate happening on this topic. I hope it continues and some other people weigh in. This is something I’ve been pondering at length recently, and I’d really like to hear others’ thoughts.

Sometimes, I come away from library-related events mulling, in a not-quite-positive way, over some of the thoughts that were articulated. I guess these can be described as my “uh-oh” moments: they’re instances when someone (or even many someones) comes out with something that perplexes me. They can also be instances of silence when I don’t think there should have been silence; that is, when something important goes unsaid. I had two of those moments at the SLQ Unconference, one of the unsaid variety, and one of the said.

Need before the tool
First of all, and perhaps most importantly, I don’t know that there was quite enough reiteration of the fact that the customer’s need, or the service imperative, must, must, MUST come before the technology. We cannot adopt an attitude of “oooh, shiny new thing, let’s give it a try” - at least, not in developing services for our libraries. In our personal and extra-curricula lives, and even within defined work-play situations (like Learning 2.0 programs), it’s fine to play with technology for the sake of it. We shouldn’t, though, grab at new technologies and attempt to deliver services using them just for the sake of it. There must be a defined need for a service, and we must carefully evaluate the tools we have available to us to deliver it. We must think through the options, and those options should include our full swag of tools, not just the Web 2.0 ones. If a static HTML page or a database driven interface would work better than a blog, we must be prepared to let go of our techno-lust and get back to basics.

Wikipedia (and the web?) are never going to be as good as our collections
I heard a couple of times, from a couple of people, this idea that “the information we have in our collections is always going to be better than what our customers find online”. No, no, no! This is not what Web 2.0 is about, people!

(Aside: Interestingly, the phrase used was, I’m pretty sure, ‘find online’, not ‘find in Wikipedia’. I can kind of, almost see the rationale behind our fear mongering about the quality of information in Wikipedia. But to use the generalisation ‘online’? Hmmmm. If I had the time to spare, I’d hyperlink every word in this paragraph to a quality online resource on a different subject, just to prove my point. Maybe they meant Wikipedia by inference. Maybe they said ‘Wikipedia’ and I heard ‘online’. I’m going to cling to the idea that one of these two scenarios is true, because the suggestion that the information we have in our collections is necessarily better than anything that can be found online is just so bewildering that I have to hope that’s not what was meant.)

We go on and on about how user generated content is wonderful. “Let people tag our catalogue records”, we cry! “Let people comment on our blogs”, we argue. Why, then, do we insist that what we have in our collections is absolutely, necessarily better than what can be found online, simply by virtue of being in our collections? I’m not sure that I see a great deal of difference between letting users tag our catalogue records (or even pulling data from Library Thing into our catalogues) and the authorship model for Wikipedia. If we continue to tell our customers “Wikipedia bad, library good”, we’re going to set ourselves up for a fall, because no matter what we do, our customers are going to use it. And not only our customers, but our staff: if I need some basic information on something techie-ish, my first port of call is Wikipedia, because the information I get there is consistently good and more up-to-date than what I get anywhere else. Wouldn’t it be better, then, to teach our customers about using Wikipedia wisely, and about how they can contribute to make it a better resource, than to try and stop them from using it?

Everyone’s an expert: that’s a basic tenet of this Web 2.0 world we’re operating in. And you know what? It’s true. Wikipedia facilitates the documentation of the knowledge everyday folks have stored in their minds on every topic you can think of. It’s democratisation, globalisation of the knowledge sharing process like we’ve never encountered before, at least not to this extent. Wikipedia allows you and me to document that which we are experts on. As a result, there are information artifacts in Wikipedia that are pure gold, and that are simply not published anywhere else.

Yes, let’s focus on making our resources as easily discoverable as Wikipedia articles, because our resources are good (and our discovery services often aren’t that great). But Wikipedia has its place, and sometimes it’s going to be able to supply more up-to-date, more detailed (dare I say better?) information than what’s in our collections.

[the virtual librarian steps down off her soapbox]

Always, always on the money, Meredith Farkas has a great post on the training-wheels culture that seems to pervade library-land. Check out the post and read the comments. This is good stuff. Meredith’s post was written in response to a couple of others, from Nicole Engard, Dorothea Salo and Emily Clasper - also great reading.

Culture is everything: it enables, and it inhibits. So much about the culture in libraries is awesome (like how willing everyone is to share information, expertise, time). But some aspects of the culture (like our fear of getting it wrong, or breaking stuff, or not knowing everything about something before we start talking about it) have the potential to be incredibly frustrating, especially when you’re a change-loving, technology-obsessed, give-it-me-now Gen Yer. Or a trainer. Or a project manager. Or any manager. Or an employee. Hey, it’s gotta be frustrating for a whole lot of people. (Not to mention our customers.)

The key message behind Meredith’s post, and the message we should get used to putting out there: try. Just push the button. Do a quick and dirty Google search. Learn by making mistakes. It might take some effort. It might be a little scary. But it is so satisfying to give it a go.

And maybe even more important is this second message: if you do try, and you still need (or want) to ask for help, you’re not admitting defeat. You’ll make someone very happy by showing you are interested enough to have given it a shot.

I think this ‘give it a burl‘ attitude is what makes the whole Learning 2.0 idea so fantastic: yeah, it might eat up a bit of your time; it mightn’t skill you up to be an emerging technology evangelist; it might make you realise that your library can get 2.0 without the need to pick up all these new fangled things. But it sure does encourage people to give new things a try. And that’s incredibly valuable.

If you don’t subscribe to Information Wants to Be Free, you’re seriously missing out. Go forth, and get the feed.

A brief but pertinent post from Lorcan Dempsey today on the use of evidence - or rather, the non-use of evidence - to back up discussions on bibliographic data and catalogues.

I’ve got evidence on the brain at the moment. This area of librarianship is not alone in the fact that its discourse sometimes lacks grounding in evidence. But the future of the catalogue is certainly a dominant topic of conversation at the moment - a conversation that could only benefit from the existence of and reference to a solid evidence base.

[Aside: While I’m talking about the future of the catalogue… I’ll be very interested to see the papers from the Australian Committee on Cataloguing seminar that’s on this Friday in Brisbane. Aptly titled Promise for the future, or legacy of the past? : cataloguing in a changing world the program includes papers on a range of topics from educating future cataloguers to tagging to RDA. Should be some good food for thought there.]

Roy Tennant analogises about the recent war of words triggered by a post from the Anonymous Librarian on twopointopians.

Tenant starts out his post on this topic by admitting to his tendency to stay out of the way of religious wars. Indeed, the fervour illustrated in both the comments on the AL’s post (all 52 of them) and all the counter-posts on other blogs does indeed smack of the kind of fervour that often springs up around religion. And the terminology? Cult. 2.0 gospel. Manifesto. Sacred. Mantra. There’s a thesis here in the language choices, alone, let alone in the play out of the us vs them polarisation.

Anyhoo, the real point of this post was to comment on what Tenant alludes to as Meredith Farkas’ voice of reason. I actually read Meredith’s post in response to the AL’s before I read the AL’s post, so I came to it with no real understanding of what inspired it. What resonated for me, then, wasn’t how well Meredith had responded to the whole thread, but just how well she articulated the fact that every service we implement, every Web2.0 initiative we embark on, must be informed by a need:

I have dealt with a lot of people who are like kids in a candy store when it comes to these technologies. Like someone who told me the other day that Flickr is the logical next thing libraries should have after a blog (never mind whether there’s a need for either of them or not, I suppose). I used to be one of those kids in a candy store. I remember when I came to Norwich over two years ago, eager to implement blogs, wikis, etc. And a lot of the initial things I tried to implement failed. Why? Because I put the tool before the need…

Hallelujah! I’m the first to want to play with shiny new stuff, but as I’ve said before, the need has got to come before the tool.

Library2.0 (or twopointopia) is about creating user-centred services, and, where appropriate, harnessing technology to help us do it. It’s not about the technology.

This is the most insightful blog post around Library2.0 I’ve read in a while. It should be mandatory reading for all Library/Learning2.0 programs. It’s certainly something I’ll be sharing with my colleagues, as we think about the services our users want from us and the tools available to us to deliver them.

Take a look at Lorcan Dempsey’s post on professional communication, and the Librarian in Black’s response.

There are two issues here for me: firstly, the issue of rigour; and secondly, the disconnect between the literature and practice, or the applicability of the truly rigorous literature.

1. Rigour

The Librarian in Black makes this comment:

The funny thing is that when I started library school (coming from an Literature Master’s degree), I criticized library professional literature up and down. Much of the writing was sloppy, there was very little research done to back up points in many of the articles we were given to read, citations were only done sometimes, and flaws in logic (usually over-generalizations) were found in just about everything I read.

Ah, ditto! I raged about the state of the literature throughout my Grad Dip. In fact, I continue to rage. So I found myself furiously nodding as I read this paragraph. The LiB, however, goes on to say:

Now, I find that all of that literature was coming from more casual publications, not the refereed journals that we’re talking about here.

So here’s the crux of the first issue: when it comes to formal professional publications and conference papers, I don’t know that I agree with LiB. The degree of rigour in the library literature still disappoints me, at times. Go to any library conference, and you’ll see a whole lot of “we did this and it was cool cause it worked”, and not so much of “we identified this issue, took this approach to gathering data to inform our decision, implemented and evaluated this project, and these are our findings”. And I’m talking about conferences where peer review is involved.

2. Disconnect

LiB says

So…what need do our professional publications fill? Are they filling supply or demand? Do we keep these going because the content really is useful for our real live librarians? Generally, I would say no–at least nobody I know in public libraries.

Here, I agree with the LiB wholeheartedly. In my opinion, our professional literature is disconnected from practice, and often lacks applicability in a practical context - particularly in a public library context. This frustrates me no end. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve gone to the literature, looking to find some data to support a decision I need to make. And it’s often just not there, even though I know there are other libraries out there grappling with the same issue I am.

But why is it not there? Partly, as the LiB says, because the literature that comes out of the US (which makes up a big chunk of the ’scholarly’ publishing we have available to us) is driven by the tenure requirements of academic librarianship and grounded in theory.

But it’s also because, as a profession (and I’m referring here to practitioners) that values information and the sharing of knowledge and ideas, and that ostensibly values scholarly information above all else (a whole issue in itself), we are woeful when it comes to conducting our own research and documenting it in the literature. Our journals should be brimming over with content. Editors should be fighting authors off with sticks. But that’s not the case, is it?

I’m a big believer in evidence based practice. I want to make informed decisions, and I know the value that documented evidence has when you’re trying to persuade someone to go with an idea. Part of being committed to evidence based practice is being committed to writing and publishing. We need a good base of professional literature to inform our practice. And we’re the only ones that can build it.

Practitioners need to spend time taking an evidence based approach to their practice, and publishing somewhere (anywhere - more on that below) about the outcomes. Because that’s the only way the literature is ever going to be relevant and useful to practitioners.

[Aside: Actually, it’s not the only way. Another way we can shape our literature to give it meaning for practitioners is for us to rethink the divide between academia and practice, or at least, to encourage partnerships across the divide.]

Which leads me to issue three (I said two issues, didn’t I? And you thought I was done ranting!)…

3. Blogs vs scholarly communication: what’s the difference?

Right now, we’re still negotiating whether blogs are a legitimate part of professional literature. My personal opinion is that yes, they certainly are. If Jo at Library X posts about his experience with Y issue, she’s contributing to the professional literature.

Blog reading has a huge influence on my professional practice. Blog posts get me thinking about issues that probably wouldn’t cross my radar otherwise. There are, however, differences between the way I use blog posts and the way I use ‘traditionally published’ professional literature. Blog posts get me thinking and challenge me to do new things. But what blogs don’t provide me with is the documented evidence I need to inform my decision making. Not in themselves, anyway. People don’t typically publish the findings of their projects on blogs. But what people do use blogs for is to point to findings published elsewhere.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could harness the speed and accessibility offered by blogs to publish our rigorous, scholarly, evidence-based professional communications, rather than just to point to them? Then blogs really would form part of the “most compelling and worthwhile literature in the library field today“. So why don’t we do it? Now there’s a thought…

[A final aside: Lorcan Dempsey notes that with regard to blogs, he has a “continuing sense that that this is still a fugitive medium. This means that an entry can be dispatched relatively quickly.” I wish! It seems to take me a disproportionately long time to blog, compared to writing for other forums. I think for me, that’s due in large part to the fact that blogging is almost entirely about thinking out issues, so I’m not coming to a post with my thoughts formulated, the way I would for other pieces of writing. Interesting.]

David Lee King posted about an epiphany or two late last week. The stand out for me was this one:

…a library site should mimic the actual library. And what type of experience happens in a library?

One of community. And conversation. And participation.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the idea of community and library websites. I think the key is we need to consider our library websites as spaces, just like our buildings, where people ‘connect’ (and I don’t mean connect in the sense of ‘dialing in’ - I mean it in the sense of real, meaningful interaction) with our services and collections and with each other. Library websites are, essentially, online branches. They’re places for exploring the collections, for interacting, for sharing and developing ideas and knowledge… And just like our physical spaces, they should centre on community and activity; they should allow users to interact with, and through, them in meaningful ways.

Does any of this sound familiar? We’re operating in a 2.0 world, where social networking is the buzz concept of the day. Sites like Facebook allow users to communicate with friends and colleagues, to form and join groups on topics of interest to them, to connect for work, play, and a whole lot more.

The tools we need to create dynamic, participative online branches are at our fingertips. Lots of them are even free. Initiatives like Learning2.0 are seeing us build the skills sets we need to allow us implement these tools. So now all we need to do is just get cracking.

And, perhaps, give up on worrying about getting it perfect.

Colleagues at my previous pow are used to hearing me rant about minimum technology competencies for library staff. There’s been interesting debate recently in the biblioblogosphere about exactly what competencies are core – what must library staff know in order to be able to serve their patrons effectively in a 2.0 world?

Emily at Library Revolution (one of my favourite library blogs) got the conversation off to a great start with a list that included tasks as simple as cutting and pasting (yup, evidently she has encountered some librarians whose skills in this area are a little lacking). Read her original post, and the comments – it’s worth the effort. The to-and-fro in the biblioblogosphere quickly escalated, with many bloggers coming up with their own competency lists, many of which centred on web 2.0 skills.

I’m unashamed to admit that I haven’t attempted to do a number of the things that were listed in posts prompted by Emily’s. This here librarian has not shot a single video in her time, nor put together any screen casts, nor even recorded a pod cast. So by definition, I guess I don’t possess those competencies right now. And I consider myself to be something of a ‘geek’…

I’m not about to argue that minimum tech competencies should not be at the top of our agendas. In fact, I think a minimum standard of technical skills should be an absolute non-negotiable. But what I would say is this: while the possession of competencies is important, in my mind, what is more important is that we create fun learning environments for ourselves and our colleagues, so that the process of adding tech competencies to our toolkits is not a needlessly daunting one (hello Learning 2.1 – loving the tag line! ). Our workplaces should foster a culture of continuous professional development which recognises the importance of building tech skills. We need to get excited about technology, and get our colleagues excited about it too. We should encourage each other to play, (and not just with fancy, whiz bang 2.0 stuff, but with ‘basic’ things Emily mentions in her post, too). While I might not be able to do some of the things that are listed by my peers as minimum tech competencies, what I do have going for me is that I have zero fear when it comes to playing with technology. The bottom line is, I’m not afraid to break stuff. That’s the kind of approach we should be encouraging: play, make mistakes, fix your mistakes, don’t be afraid to ask for help, have fun. Yep, I’m a digital native, a self-assured Gen Yer, and a self confessed technology addict, so perhaps my lack of fear is a product of those characteristics. But surely we can do something to take the fear out of playing with technology for our less techno-obsessed colleagues?

A colleague and I recently ran a one hour training session designed to introduce reference staff to a few of the web 2.0ish things we use on a daily basis: the corporate IM client; web based or integrated IM (alla meebo); social networking for fun and for professional hookups; and social bookmarking. The result? People seemed genuinely excited about what they could do with some of these technologies. Sure, some people came out of the session saying that Facebook just wasn’t for them, but those same people could see the real benefits of, for example, del.icio.us. We set them a homework mission, encouraged them to play, and let them know it’s ok to abandon the bits that didn’t work for them.

Which leads me to my next point: with web 2.0 stuff, I’m a strong advocate for active abandonment. Try stuff out, and if it doesn’t work for you, then give it the flick. But please, try it out, because we need to understand the spaces and tools that are available to us for service delivery in this increasingly interactive online service environment. And we also need to understand the ways our users are interacting with each other and with the information landscape, in order to learn lessons about how they might want to interact with us.

And the most important thing of all: tech competencies are not just for ‘techie’ librarians. They’re just as important for the librarians who staff reference desks (you never know when a user will need help with a ‘basic’ computer competency), and for cataloguers (because web 2.0 tools and concepts have a role to play in the future of information organisation).

[the virtual librarian steps off her soapbox]

Tomorrow is my last day at mpow. I have mixed feelings about moving on. In the professional environment, I love change. Libraries, as they currently are, need it; librarians, as members of a dynamic profession, should be advocates for it. So the idea of moving on to new challenges, in a new sector of the profession, in a different (but familiar) city, is certainly exciting.

But I’ve had a few amazing years in my current organisation. I’ve had lots of great opportunities for professional development; I’ve worked with engaged, inspired and innovative colleagues who genuinely love the library and want to use their smarts and their passion to build on the great things we already do; I’ve had the chance to play with new and emerging technologies, which has given me a whole different set of professional interests from those I had when I first stepped into this library. This is an organisation that is forward thinking, and I have greatly valued the small role I’ve had to play in the work we do.

So it follows that I’m a little sad to be leaving, despite being very happy to be going where I’m going!

With change in the air, this seems like a good time to climb up on my soap box and start spouting my opinion on all things online librarianship. I’ve been pondering the idea of blogging for a long time. I’m an avid reader of blogs - library technology blogs in particular - which makes the idea of starting my own blog more than a little daunting. There are so many great voices out there in the biblioblogosphere, and in the grand scheme of things, mine is very small…

For the last year or so, I’ve worked in a team where professional banter is the name of the game. I’m hoping that some of these colleagues will come along for the blog ride, and continue the discussions we routinely have via IM or at our staff meetings here in the comments thread. Well, they certainly better! (Fire up Google Reader guys!)

So ski ya Canberra, it was fun (and cold) while it lasted.