The quest begins...

And so the biblioblogging begins...

I'm very much aware of not wanting to blog for the sake of blogging, which is why I haven't done this sooner, but now that I've started, here's what I'm trying to achieve:

I want to elevate the status of the librarian in society so that it takes its proper place as a recognised profession in information science, both within the wider information industry as well as within popular culture. We need our Librarian Idols.

Librarians have always been my idols, every encouraging me and helping me to adopt new technology through my studies. Furthermore, in my training to become a librarian, and through meeting librarians at conferences and on the biblioblogosphere, I've come to realise that librarians are often at the cutting edge of technology. These librarians have become my inspiration to change the world through cultivating a community of lifelong learning, both in academia and in the general public.

Unfortunately, I often experience a lot of difficulty when it comes to seeking support from other departments. As an academic librarian, I often found that teaching staff would not consider us as a source of academic support in embedding information literacy in coursework, nor would they encourage their students to consult us for assistance. Admittedly, a lot of this had to do with pressures on academic staff, but still, my work was often an uphill battle to outreach both to students and staff.

Similarly, in the public library sector, I seem to be fighting a battle of a different kind. I believe public libraries need to be a place for learning new information trends, but many of the staff really need to catch up on their information literacy skills. What's more, I'm keen to launch a Web 2.0 staff development programme, not dissimilar to the "23 things" programme, however, some initial responses have ranged from cynicism to active resistance from library staff, along the lines of "why should we go about learning new stuff that we don't see the relevance in?" On a separate front, I'm experiencing an attitude of, "We don't want you to increase usage of internet resources." That may be, but that's where the demand is, and we need to meet demand, not work around it, and that means expanding our resources, and not cut outselves short, leaving us on the wrong side of the ever-growing digital divide.

I may also add that these criticisms aren't a hard-and-fast rule - there are also very progressive librarians in the public sector who do great things. However, the fact that these issues are arising at all means that it really needs to be tackled now, and quickly. Living in a relatively remote area, we have the most to gain from adopting interactive information technology in our library services, and the most to lose if we do not.

Clearly, I have my work ahead of me. My current goal is to try to get my staff to have a proper grasp of "Web 2.0". Before that, I have a feeling that I need to teach most of them a thing or two about proper web searching and using online databases, before I get them to start setting up alerts, folksonomies, feed readers and participating in the blogosphere.

And yes, I know it's a lot to learn. But hey, it's not rocket science. Anybody can do it. And if you're a library worker, you should bloody well know how to do it. It's your job.

Some might say that's a hard line to take, but I honestly feel that if the library industry doesn't get its act together, then it's going to die in the arse. I make it a rule to know everything cool that there is to do on the internet, and then teach it to somebody else. Then they can say "That's so cool, and the librarian showed me how to do it. Therefore, librarians are cool."

Because librarians should be cool. Librarians should be idols.