It'll all end in cheers

It's not often I find something to agree with on the opinion page of the Melbourne Age, which increasingly resembles a cross between the campus newspapers of my youth and Green Left Weekly, but today was an exception.

The writer makes the point that increased ease of communication is paradoxically leading to a decline in the basic skills of written communication. I see this all the time at work, where it's not uncommon for me to receive an email enquiry which is so garbled, ungrammatical and a-syntactical as to be literally incomprehensible. I often have to write back and say, as politely as possible, What the hell are you asking me? And these emails usually come from people who went through school before the education system fell apart, and who often are holding down professional jobs.

Unfortunately I'm not in the lucky position of the person who told me he automatically deletes unread any email that begins with 'Hi' or ends in 'cheers'.

My own suspicion is that the real problem is simple selfishness, which we used to try to minimize by teaching people manners. Why bother to write legibly? If someone can't read you, that's their problem. You know your own phone number, so of course you're going to gabble it at top speed when leaving a message on my phone. So I have to play the tape three or four times over to reconstruct the message, like some CIA agent manning a wiretap operation.

Somewhat related is the near-extinction of the salutation 'Dear...' I suspect that most modern illiterates consider this either overly familiar or effeminate.

Cheers!

Race to the finish

Okay, the pressure is on to finish the '23 things' agenda. So let's see:

Number 16: Wikis. I'm sorry to say that I didn't seem to find any "innovative ways libraries are using wikis". All I can see is that some librarians are using wikis to replace online bulletin boards and discussion lists, which is hardly a quantum leap.

Number 19: Explore an award-winning Web 2.0 site. I checked quite a few sites from the list, and didn't find any of them interesting enough to "play" with. I looked in the toybox and what I wanted wasn't there. By the way, wouldn't you think a site as successful as Craigslist wouldn't be quite so, well, ugly?

Number 20: Discover YouTube. Done, long ago. Here's a favourite.

Number 21: look at a tool for finding podcasts. I did, put in "Glenn Gould" and got no hits. I put in "Glenn Miller" and got no hits. I put in "Glenn Campbell" and got no hits.

Number 22: Look at the World eBook Fair site. I did. The really scary thing is the number of amateur writers self-publishing on the Net. As the old saying goes, Everybody has a book inside them, and in most cases, that's where it should stay.

Number 23: summarize my thoughts about the programme. Here goes:

Firstly, I have to pay tribute to the considerable amount of work which obviously went into planning this programme, so full credit to the organisers.

A few thoughts about possible changes: make it shorter. I found my interest, and that of others, petering out by week 5-6.

Ditch the "play" angle. Most of the people doing this programme are middle-aged, with at least two degrees, a mortgage, and a few decades of mostly unfashionable life-experience. They can learn things without it needing to be made 'FUN' and 'PLAY'.

Ditch 'Library 2.0' as the overall label. One of the things I learned in this course is that there is no such thing as Library 2.0 It's a marketing term that works very well for people like Stephen Abrams, and has about as much meaning or validity as "NEW, IMPROVED!". By all means include it as one of the elements of the course: just because you don't believe in the tooth fairy or flying saucers or astrology doesn't mean you don't need to know about these things. (And I swear to you, I had already written the above words when I went looking for a generic 'new improved' flash to illustrate this post, and found the image above. I think it speaks for itself.)

Segway: chariot of Karma!

I was planning a follow-up post about that poor boob doomed by his library to not only toodle around on a stupid Segway, but to wear a girly crash-helmet because he was going all of 12 miles per hour tops. Actually, Segways are more dangerous than you might think. Brit newspaper editor Piers Morgan, who had earlier mocked George W. Bush for falling off a Segway, has himself fallen off one, breaking three ribs. Mock the Segway at your peril.

When is a library not a library?

For those of you who came in late, here's a taste of the brimstone Elmo has been dishing out lately:

"Libraries have had their day. They will not survive."

In a sense, Elmo's prophecy is already coming true. If you look around my Library, probably about a third of the 'patrons' are using free internet, mostly for amusement or time-killing, another third are de-campused students using us as a study hall, and perhaps another third are what you might consider 'traditional' library patrons. It has been increasingly clear to me over the last ten years that the decline in 'serious' patrons over-the-counter is due simply to the fact that these people (the ones with opposable thumbs) can increasingly get what they want via the internet, and through self-ordering from our online catalogue. Leaving desk staff to mop up what's left.

I'm the first to admit that, past a certain point, which we have almost certainly already reached, it's the patrons who define what the institution is*. And I'm not always pessimistic about this. Just as the baths were the civic hub in cities of the Roman world, there is no reason why libraries might not bid to become something similar today. My main concern, however, is that, having begun my present working life as a research librarian, I might be finishing it as a cabana boy.

*Though I'm reminded of the good old story about the crusty university lecturer who began in the era of men-only campuses, and would begin every lecture with the salutation "Gentlemen..." Over the years, women were admitted, but he still began each lecture with "Gentlemen..." One day, it reached the point where only a single man was enrolled in his subject, the rest of the students being women. He began the lecture: "Sir..."

St. Elmo's fire

Firstly, a blushing vote of thanks for Elmo's kind words in comments to my previous post. Needless to say, I have enjoyed Elmo's blog: entertaining and thought-provoking.

But that's not all he had to say: do check it out, but make sure you're wearing asbestos gloves, and that you have a fire blanket handy for your PC. Elmo is blazing!

(I was going to urge Elmo to copyright the expression 'Whatever 2.0' - the t-shirt merchandising alone could make me, er us, millions - but of course someone has beaten Elmo to it. However, Googling the term led me to this rather good post on Web 2.0 baloney.)

Show me the money! or Musings of a 2.0 Sceptic

First, let me apologize for that image of Tom Cruise. I realize that nowadays a lot of people find him kind of creepy. But Tom is asking what I'm asking: Show me the money! By which I mean, show me what 'Library 2.0' really is.

The Learning 2.0 programme has left me with a nagging doubt that 'Library 2.0' is just another of those culture fads that we'll look back on in 10 years' time with a mixture of embarrassment and amusement, like Segways, or manmade global warming. Perhaps it'll be an answer in the 2015 edition of Trivial Pursuit.

The trouble sign is that no-one can tell me what L2.0 actually is. Every blog and website I have visited just sprays around words like community, trust, participation, content-rich, interactive, etc., in much the same way that a squid uses ink, or heavy metal bands use dry-ice fog. Sadly, I'm inclined to agree with online columnist Jonah Goldberg:

"Web 2.0 is a nothing but a buzz phrase designed to make money for people who use phrases like Web 2.0."

This is not to say that new things are not happening in Libraries. Unquestionably they are, and nobody knows this better than librarians. But what is the purpose of taking a grab-bag of mostly unrelated internet applications, and pretending that they form an organic identity that is, moreover, crucial to the survival of libraries? Blogging is important for librarians? Show me the money! Show me the library blog that really makes a difference. Tell me how many library patrons actually read it.

Librarians need to know about blogs, certainly, in the same way they need to know about lots of other things in the modern world, like pole dancing. But to insist that a librarian needs to write a blog in order to be modern is like insisting they ride around the library on those stupid Segways instead of walking.

Update: I should have known.

Must read

Again, a must-read post on the subject of Library 2.0 from the wonderful Annoyed Librarian.