Library 2.0 both excites me and makes me nervous. I'm excited by all of the new ways to access information and by all of the new information that is available. I'm nervous for several reasons, including my fear that our customers aren't quite ready for some of the changes and I know it is going to be difficult to help some of them deal with the inevitable changes that are going to occur.
Another reason I am nervous is because I am a keeper. I hold on to things even when their usefulness is questionable. My at-home library is very much a "just in case" collection. Rick Anderson talked about libraries no longer building up a large "just in case" collection of print materials in the OCLC newsletter Issue No.2 2006. One reason this worries me is the lack of understanding by our customers, especially our student customers and their teachers, that materials available through library databases are also "book" resources and are not the same as doing a Google search and picking the first website on the results list.
I love the idea of integrating catalogs across library systems, but , again, I'm afraid this is ahead of many customers' understanding. Even now, if they see an item in our catalog they assume it is at the branch they are in, it will be even harder for them to understand that not only is it not in our branch, but it isn't even in our state.
Some of my other concerns include:
If we go to where customers are, how will we measure their use, in order to justify funding? Will we have to go to private as well as public funds? Does that mean advertising? If yes, do we then loose credibility?
No comments:
Post a Comment