#15 On Library 2.0 & Web 2.0 ...

So it seems to me that this is the usual philosophical agonising that Librarians undertake about 'the role of the library' and 'the image of the librarian' in a slightly modified form.

My background is public libraries, where generally speaking we were so busy we didn't have time for this, so generally we just left this kind of soul searching and image making to those within the field plenty of free time on their hands. Frankly, the image that librarians were either supposed to have or wanted to have seemed a million miles from my reality then. I seemed to spend all my time sorting out staffing, sorting out complaints, ejecting the unruly, fixing up building and computer problems, squeezing the very last cent out of the book budget, and generally trying to make the library budget perform miracles. Most shifts had acustomer to staff ratio of 50:1, so reference work was a matter of squeezing one query around another, do a bit and leave them with it, do another query, come back to check up. On and on, so that after several hours you brain was just spinning.

So I'm now hardened into the "I don't care about the image/purpose/values" camp, with a general expectation that working under a blazing hail of customer suggestions, demands and anti-social behaviours, you will get the message about what works & doesn't work, what the customers want (and that's a bottomless pit) and do, and battling with the funding body to actually get it for them. I've never had any problem identifying customer desires, the trick is rolling it out to them within the budget and staff workloads. So Web 2.0 (orLibrary 2.0) better be Cost Effective 2.0, with Time Effective 2.0 thrown in, or it ain't going to work.