This has taken me more than a few days to digest. I read, browsed, re-read and searched and surfed and then observed my library and the society I/we live in. Three of the articles/blogs struck me as the most interesting and pertinent and thought provoking: "icebergs", because I am in a small library trying to navigate around hazards and avoid behemoths that would swamp me in their wake; "a temporary place in time", because she emphasizes the speed of change of current technology and also the different faces of our profession and the personal human side of the interactions and conversations; library2.0 debased, was fascinating as I am a skeptic and am generally the devil's advocate in any discussion. I loved following the threads in the entire blog- exchange and reading/hearing all the comments. That was the best experience I have had yet in "listening to a discussion" on the Web.
Two events in the past week in my personal life have brought home the impact of the digital age directly. Attending the school programs of two of my granddaughters (one in high school and one in middle school) in an affluent suburb of Omaha I was impressed and distracted by the number of digital recording devices in the large audiences. It is polite to turn off your cell phone at a performance, but does no one feel intrusive holding a glowing screen at varying heights during a Christmas cantata? Will they enjoy the program more at home on a 42" flat screen than they would have just looking, watching and listening in the moment?
Then the Man of the Year issue of TIME magazine arrived, and the beginning pages were a picture spread of Barack Obama and his campaign. The power of the Web in his election is undeniable, because even the venerable TIME sends you to Flickr for 100,000 more photos. A two-page spread (page 44) of his rally in Manassas, VA the night before the election does not show the candidate or the huge crowd, but instead a forest of arms holding digital cameras.
Information overload! I believe we still need editors and librarians and collectors and collators and sorters and some way to direct this immense flow before it overwhelms us. Library 2.0 is a tool, a means to better end. Certainly it will be used judiciously by some, wholeheartedly embraced by others, ignored by the entrenched and hopefully morph into variations useful to the range of uses it is going to have to serve.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Monday, December 8, 2008
I did some browsing on SlideShare and decided that I wanted to see if I could be entertained and amused with a slide show - not just educated with a Power Point presentation. Without the person/presenter a slide show can be just awful, although very informative. I really do much better with human interaction and the opportunity to ask questions, etc. Looking for facts on Slide Share did turn up some possibilities, but I think it will take more time and searching. Another tool in the toolbox though.
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