Brown and Duguid (2002) weren’t directly addressing librarians in "Home Alone" (p. 63-89), but librarians do work with software, hardware, workplaces, home offices (their own and patrons'), and networks (human and technical).
Here are a few points that might be pulled out and mulled over:
Cool the hype. Be realistic. Technologies are great and often necessary, but face it: they are often not designed that well and result in wasting money and time, and can actually limit productivity. If you don’t believe it, just read the home diary on p. 63.
Office space matters. Regular workspaces that can be personalized are good for you. If you doubt this, read about the Chiat/Day experiments.
Mix it up a little. Don’t isolate. Yes, we get on each others’ nerves, but we can also solve problems together and relieve each others’ anxieties. Don't isolate patrons either.
Libraries, like the systems they use, may be allowing your (and your systems people's) work to drift to patrons while ignoring their social contexts. If you’re doing that, stop it. Tap into the social contexts, don't ignore them. Utilize social spaces as well as social software.
Keep your brows down. Don’t brush off non-librarian staff and patrons. People without MLS degrees have all kinds of “embodied knowledge”, like that typesetter on p. 80.
Don't push make-believe. There is no Sanity Clause. And there is no “One click away.” Any convenient “one click” results from countless other clicks (of developers, graphic designers, merchants, librarians, etc.). So show off new and super fast library services, but don’t go invisible in the process: unveil the clicks behind that button while pitching what it can do.
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Brown, J., & Duguid, P. (2002). The Social Life of Information. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press.
1 comment:
First off, I really like the way you set up your posts. The images are amusing and the way you bold certain words makes your posts easy to scan.
Now with regards to the content of this post, I agree with Brown, Duguid, and yourself in that librarians have to be pragmatic in choosing which technologies they choose for their libraries. So far, many of the pieces that I've read about how libraries should incorporate these 2.0 tools in their services have been cautionary about what to choose as opposed to a cry to jump on the technological bandwagon for the newest technology. However, after reading some of the anecdotes in the Brown and Duguid reading, it seems that the type of common sense "lessons" in your post have been and are still in danger of not being implemented.
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