One of the many advantages of working in a public library is that you have the opportunity to broaden your horizons. Whether it be because you have to or because you want to, the opportunity is there. One of the things I like is connecting with customers and learning from them. I've been given books to read and websites to visit. Other staff have really connected with our 'tweens, teens and even our younger customers via games, gaming and website show and tell often learning from them as well. And if you are around long enough, you get to develop a real rapport with some and watch others grow up. We get to play around with sites and technology (not that everyone is into that, but if you are - you get paid to do it) and that is cool, too.
Sometimes, however I find that I am at a loss. Chat rooms lost me. I remember investigating them back in the early 80's (Commodore 64!) and even then could not figure out why to do it (socially) or even how to do it well. I understood it when I was looking for an answer (does anyone know where to find X in Columbus? for instance) but the general chat baffled me and still does - but I never was much for phone chat either so I guess that explains that.
But this generation seems to want to connect to everything - chat room while talking on a cell phone, for instance. This makes me wonder if they are not just bored and have no idea what other opportunities are out there that could be just as much fun, take up just as much time, but are beneficial.
The site Foldit (Foldit is a revolutionary new computer game enabling you to contribute to important scientific research.) allows chat, news, etc, but you also are able to create something by playing a game. This made me think about another use for us. Maybe we could develop webchats/blogs for social issues or community issues. Maybe we should design a page for each of our sites (adult, teen and kids) and call it if I ruled the world, or if I ruled my city. I wonder what type of useful contributions we'd get. Maybe we could combine it with some SIM software so it could be interactive. Maybe it could be a tool for social/community design. Suppose we could post a general problem in a SIM world that allowed people to play around with it within the confines of known social constraints. It could be fun, it could be beneficial and it could be educational - and it may be useful to the community. Maybe we could mine our customers for information, gather, catalog and store it for future users. Maybe that is one thing future libraries will do. What do you think?
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Ramblings of a Budgeting Manager
2 comments:
I think you should keep all those great ideas to yourself from now on. :\
I think you're absolutely right. Have you read "Here Comes Everybody" by Clay Shirky? The main theme of that book is how the sheer volume of people who are interacting through all these tools is what's contributing to the wealth of information we have available now. To my mind, this makes libraries especially important first because we can help people navigate all that information and determine the merits of the information they find, but also because we can be a common ground for people to meet, share and discover that information. I think the physical libraries will continue to serve that purpose, but our web presence can and should do it as well.
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