Saturday, November 10, 2007

Catching the Library Wave

More and more librarians are breaking out of the “shhhhhh” mold. As the medium changes librarians have to change. If we don’t we will loose out to the very things our students are embracing. Technology and all it’s trimmings is like an unopened present, waiting for librarians not to just unwrap it but to act like the child in the commercial who gets just the gift he or she wants! Get excited, technology is not the end of libraries; it is the beginning of a new world of librarianship. I am not a traditional librarian, I was a journalist first and research is in my veins. I enjoyed raising my children, only my stay-at-home playground was in Europe, lots of things to see, read, and learn about. I was still researching, just doing it through personal, primary sources. I was starting to think I was the only librarian who had to wait for the technology to catch up before I became one, but now in Ohio I see a kindred spirit. No, I was not a California surfer like Allan Pollchik, unless you count bus tours to Paris, and surfing the Internet. Pollchick like myself entered the library profession as a second or third career. He and I were always librarians; we just had to wait for the field of librarianship to catch up to us, to catch our wave!

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