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Pegasus Librarian Posts

The Futility of Search; or, Why Librarians Will Always Be Important

Published by Iris on Thursday, February 22nd, 2007

A colleague of mine recently asked what search strategies or terms I use when I’m looking for image collections online. My answer? I don’t search. I monitor sites that point toward collections, I ask colleagues, I keep my eyes open when I’m wandering, more or less lost, through the interwebs. Everything I trip over, I bookmark. Strange as it may sound, I don’t think I’ve ever actually searched for a collection. Even stranger, I never realized that I never search for these things until my colleague asked me about it.

Coming to this realization for the first time, I wondered if I’m not really a librarian. Aren’t librarians about search? Isn’t that what we do for our patrons? Isn’t that our unique contribution to the world? And then a wise man wrote unto me, “Search is for losers. Personal networks and contacts are where it’s at.” (Yes, email quoted with permission.)

While I’m not saying that search is dead (Nitzsche and Barthes are much better at such absolutes than I am), and while I know that’s not what Steve was saying either, I’m starting to re-imagine my purpose as a librarian. I’ve just realized that I’m working to become one of those people in the social network that other people go to when they don’t want to search for image collections and other such resources.

And I think this speaks to that perennial question: what role will librarians play in this evolving information world? Expert searcher? Yes. Expert selector? Of course. Key player in social networks? Absolutely. As more and more goes online and as search results get more and more unwieldy, those of us who make it their life’s work to collect, save, and make available the resources we discover will serve a crucial role in the research lives of our patrons.

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Libraries and Social Software

Published by Iris on Tuesday, February 20th, 2007

Four colleagues (from three schools) and I will be presenting on Thursday on the topic of social software, what role the library can play, what networking tools the library can infiltrate -er- participate in effectively, and who is responsible for teaching (and learning) these tools.

This is my first experience collaborating on a presentation with people from more than one school, and it’s quite a challenge. How do you do all those little negotiations, so dependent on voice and body language, to figure out who wants to present what, what our shared goals are, and how to present our topics effectively? How do you put together an outline, divvy up jobs, and ultimately get this thing done without ever meeting in person?

These challenges pretty much prevented us from planning much until today. And yes, the presentation is on Thursday, but such is life. Honestly, none of our schedules meshed very well until today, but even so I think we could have stepped up a little sooner if we’d been working in the same building.

But a couple of weeks ago we did manage to get a wiki going, and as is par for the course, it’s developed kind of a life of it’s own. It has the standard stuff: the speaking outline and notes about our ideas there. But we’re also going to use one page (currently called “Our Presentation“) in place of a PowerPoint or other projected presentation guide. It’ll include a rough sketch of our outline plus all the links we need for our live demonstrations (pray for happy internet gods that day!). We’ll also have our handout up there so attendees can go back and find it later, should they ever want to. They’ll also be able to see the wizard behind the curtain, since they’ll have access to all our brainstorming and speaking notes… but I hope that’s a good thing.

It wouldn’t have been practical for us to put everything together without actually talking to each other and performing all the little negotiations that are necessary, though. It would have been to slow. So today we spent some time in conference chats with each other and then even more time actually talking to each other on a conference call. We all talked, and I took notes into the wiki, which worked out rather nicely.

Now I just hope the presentation itself goes smoothly…

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My Perverse Nature…

Published by Iris on Sunday, February 18th, 2007

…tends to display itself in two ways, and I think it’s best you know about them sooner rather than later.

First, if people talk about something they think is edgy and important, and go out of their way to say that they’re totally ok with it and that everyone else should be totally ok with it and can you believe some people think this is edgy I can’t believe some people might be bothered by this and OMG I’m so fine with it… My perverse nature kicks in and I start imagining that they’re only pretending they’re ok with it, even if I know they aren’t pretending. I can’t help it. Oft quoted (and oft misquoted) lines from Shakespeare start creeping into my head, and it’s usually all I can do to keep myself from saying outloud, “The lady (or gentleman) doth protest too much, methinks.” Which usually gets completely misunderstood and then people start trying harder to convince me that I should be ok with it, or go silent as they wonder which side of the debate I’m on, anyway, and isn’t that backwards from the way Shakespeare wrote it? Is she just mixed up or did she mis-learn it?… And I silently beat my perverse nature’s head against a perverse wall and vow to keep my mouth shut the next time, which never seems to work.

The other most common way for that ugly and much-beaten-against-walls head to rear itself is when I’m sitting in a room with another person who’s reading, and that person giggles and says, “Oh, that’s funny” or gasps and says “wow, that’s interesting” and then continues reading without going on to explain what’s funny or interesting. All of a sudden, the last thing I want to do is ask what’s funny or interesting even though that’s exactly what the other person wants and expects me to do. Now, I really do want to know what’s funny or interesting. That’s not the issue. The issue is that they shouldn’t force me to ask. So depending on whether or not I think the other person should know about my perverse nature, I might force myself to ask through gritted teeth, “what’s so funny?” But I won’t want to.

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A Match Made In … Well … Somewhere