Thing 2, part 2, item 2

The last item on the thing 2 list is:

2) John Blyberg blog post here.

Meh; strikes me as more Lib/Web 2.0 boosterism; lots of sizzle and not a lot of steak. Yes, I've seen cool things at the Texas Library Association that are Web 2.0-ish and have potential for libraries. Neat little collaborative projects in the local community, etc, etc. Good things to take note of, be aware of, stay abreast of.

I've said before myself that I'm really excited about Open Source for ILSes, and eager to see what effect Koha and Evergreen will have on the marketplace. Putting control over ILS development back in the hands of librarians(catalogers) is a good sign and a good thing I can see coming out of Web 2.0 as translated into Libr 2.0; True dat.

I know some libraries have successfully hosted "gaming in libraries"; I still view it as a questionable use of resources and not convinced it's something we should necessarily be behind.

You can also do Libr 2.0 horribly, horribly wrong. At a nearby institution of Higher Ed, it is standing policy that if a book is available as an ebook, it will be collected *only* in ebook format; End result? The shelves look increasingly unappealing, filled only with "old" books. Some administrators claim this is mere "misperception" on the part of our users but I disagree. This is the WRONG way to do Libr 2.0, and I'll tell you why.

Ebooks have their place in academic library settings, especially in weighty reference materials never meant to be read straight through, or for items that are high demand, high circulation, or to expand your collection to cover subject areas you otherwise would not collect in based on your curriculum. It's like a value added bonus. It does not give you an excuse to stop collecting the latest monographs in print in your core content areas. If your shelves are perceived as only containing "old/outdated" information, your clients will judge your whole library on that basis and your support will fall off. You can have the most amazing ebook collection in the state, but if your physical collection looks like it hasn't been updated since the late 1980s...you're in trouble. In politics, perception is everything. Keeping support for libraries and library funding is very much an exercise in political economy. Out of sight, out of mind. You HAVE to keep bringing in SHINY NEW MONOGRAPHS to put in your patron's faces. Despite what the techno-boosters would have you believe, people DO still LOVE books, still associate BOOKS *strongly* with LIBRARIES, and we fail to serve them when we don't live up to their expectations. Yes, print journals are increasingly online only, for good reason, and I have no serious objection to that. But monographs, that is, sustained discursive prose in a bound codex, remains to my mind the backbone of a real and genuine education.

There are some that claim this view is out of date, the millennials won't accept it, blah blah blah. Hogwash. I've got a colleague who is a History scholar, with an emphasis in "Conflict studies" (a bit more nuanced than "Military History"), and he can tell you first hand about so-called "New Scholars" who clearly have relied only on internet and online resources and seem never to have lifted a book from a library shelf in their lives; The result? Scholarship that is shallow, facile, superficial, and keeps annoyingly "re-inventing the wheel", which makes the real experts alternately groan, laugh, and want to cry out in despair. I've encouraged my friend to publish on this topic in article or book form, but he ruefully observed that the people who most need to read his debunking would never get exposed to it unless it was available in electronic format. "It's like they discover fire anew, everyday", my friend observed, with a quiet *facepalm*.

Yes, I've seen the budgetary figures, I know now that libraries spend much much more on electronic journal subscriptions than on monograph collections, but this doesn't tell the whole story of what libraries are and what they are (or ought to be) about.
If you don't weed or keep your physical collection up the date, not even the latest technoglitz will give people enough reason to darken your doorstep. They'll just head on down to the Apple Store instead. Web 2.0 can surely deliver us great "value added" products and services to enhance our core mission, but if we ever turn our back on said core mission, with idiotic policies like "Let them Eat E-Books, Whether They Like It Or Not, One Size Fits All", then we're sunk and beyond hope.

Part of the reason I got let go from my first library job was because I cared to much about the state of the physical collection and ordered a lot of new books. My then director was mostly miffed at the cataloging backlog this created and only saw it as a problem and added headache; She didn't see any positive benefit at all, but the students did, as well as some faculty, who remarked on the high quality and "interestingness" (to borrow a Flickr buzzword) of all the new titles coming in.
Needless to say, my Director won out and I was shown the door. Again, this is the wrong way to do Libr 2.0!

Luckily, the physical collection where I presently work is in much better shape, and it helps my morale that the building I work in actually looks like a library is supposed to look like. The Reference staff are much more friendly and approachable here than in my first job, and they genuinely care about our physical as well as electronic resources.

Anyway, I look forward to finishing the North Texas 23 Things, even though a lot of these things I've already explored on my own for a few years already, pre-dating my career as a librarian. This post concludes my discussion of Thing 2. Apologies again for getting a little out of order. I knew I would have more to say on this Thing than on the others, so I appreciate your indulgence of my detour.