« Going Native in a Virtual World | Main | Second Brain: Possible Web 2.0 CMS »
August 07, 2007
Librarians and 2nd Life (2 letters of possible interest)
RE: Reaching out to the digital natives... Laugh if you must (in fact, I
think you should), but I play a MMPORG (Massively-Multiplayer Online
Roleplaying Game). There are a high number of young, net-savvy folks there.
There are frequently new players asking where things are, or how you do
things. I'll toss out answers when I can. About 50% of the time, the
person asking says "thanks," and I often respond with: "I'm a librarian-- I
love answering questions!" And they say "cool" and we move on.
There are librarians involved with Second Life, too, and I think those are
the places where we can reach out to this audience in a small way-- we're
librarians, we're helpful, we're information hunter-gatherers.
To paraphrase Churchill: "we shall research on the beaches, we shall
research in the databases, we shall research in the games and in the chat
rooms, we shall fight in the virtual worlds; we shall never surrender."
Ann M. Holman, MLS
Systems Librarian
Stitt Library: Information is Our Lifeblood.
National Naval Medical Center
301-319-8411 (voice)
269-8411 (DSN)
295-6001 (fax)
amholman@bethesda.med.navy.mil
https://www.bethesda.med.navy.mil/professional/stitt_library/index.aspx
"If everyone knew how smart and funny and dedicated librarians were, no
library would ever be shut down again."
- Ann Seidl
-----Original Message-----
From: Medical Libraries Discussion List [mailto:MEDLIB-L@LIST.UVM.EDU] On
Behalf Of Tony McSean
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 6:14 AM
To: MEDLIB-L@LIST.UVM.EDU
Subject: Re: Chat: re "librarian" as obsolete
It's a conundrum. "Librarian" and "library" are words that carry a lot of
undesirable historical baggage and can be used by the ignorant and/or young
as sticks to beat us; on the other hand, we don't have a decent
alternative. I think it's a really serious problem. We hear a lot from academic
librarians saying that students who have grown up in the digital age no
longer see the close association of libraries with knowledge acquisition.
When digital natives think of libraries at all they often think of a
quieter, dowdier version of Starbucks.
When you talk to people outside the profession - as we all have to do
occasionally - you sometimes find some very odd preconceptions indeed, not
all of them with a basis in reality. It's a commonplace to say that as a
profession we are rather too strongly wedded to our complex and abstruse
rules and procedures. I would take this down a level and say that we create
trouble for ourselves by our difficulty in ever completely dropping
something from our repertoire. Things get overlaid, never completely
replaced. Perhaps we should be more like the software industry and be
prepared to tell our users that Library 1.7 is no longer available and its
features no longer supported - we have moved to Library 2.0 And So Must You.
Posted by schnitzr at August 7, 2007 01:20 PM