A change is a-brewing

Almost one week since ALA’s annual conference ended and I’m just now catching up to some ALA-related posts that I’ve been meaning to put here.   Before I go on to more session-specific postings, however, I wanted to write about the most important element of ALA and, for that matter, any conference:  the people.

My primary mission at the conference was to meet my fellow library folk, talk to them, find out what was buzzing through L-y-wood, and this mission was fulfilled beyond my expectations.  The most exciting part was finding out how many people were feeling the same way I did – that something’s gotta change.

To all the fresh new library students, librarians, library staff out there who are asking themselves “is this all there is?” please allow me to introduce you to some restless natives, of all ages, who are ready to get the New Librarian Party started:

Karin Dalziel, librarian and artist, as well as the creator of lisstudents.ning.com where library students can get together and compare notes.  Just before the conference she had a great post about marketing in libraries, which hits at one of our biggest issues.

Cindi Trainor, techie librarian, blogger, mama, and model.  Cindi wrote about change in libraries and how we need to, you know … do it already!

Nathan Bomer talked me into the Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. lecture, for which I am very grateful.  He’s also musing on the state of ALA and what we can do about it.

I met Michelle Boule at the OCLC Blogger’s Salon.  She did a great job on the BIGWIG Social Software Showcase, which has been lauded across the blogosphere several times over.

Forward thinkers like these can be found in droves at some great wiki spaces such as Improve ALA and Library Society of the World.   But if this desire for change is going to go anywhere, we need to get together and really start throwing some ideas around.  These wikis are great places to start and I’ll be keeping tabs on both of them.  Hopefully we can all have our own little New Librarian Party organized in time for Midwinter … whaddya say?

The Ultimate Debate: Do Libraries Innovate?

Karen Schneider
Joseph Janes
Stephen Abram
moderated by Andrew Pace (standing in for Roy Tennant)

Bullets from the discussion –

Innovation comes from individuals, not institutions so perhaps question should be, “do *librarians* innovate?” which would be answered “yes” but to ask about institutions is a non-question. Institutions either “facilitate or get in the way of the individual” per the panel.

Stephen Abram — we have innovative people but very poor *diffusion* … when there’s a good idea in the business world, it spreads quickly; when there’s a good idea in the library world, hardly any one knows about it. Fix our diffusion, our communication. Start bragging.

Library culture is one of victimization, creating self-fulfilling prophecies of failure, but truth is that libraries are doing just fine, even as some libraries close, many other libraries have increased budgets. We have a doomsday culture right now. Why?

Karen Schneider — Changing the terms of how we succeed — Flickr was originally intended to be a gaming site by founders, but they looked at how the site was getting used and changed gears.

Stephen Abram — innovators vs. slugs … slugs are the ones with a long silver trail behind them

Joseph Janes — San Jose’s Second Life school might not work, but at least they’re *trying* it; public library in Arizona that dropped Dewey in favor of bookstore-like genre browsing has had zero complaints from users. Library community beats up on those who try new things without waiting to see how it turns out.

My impressions: The culture of librarians came up a lot in this debate. Our stereotypes, our self-perceptions, our obsession with the status quo. The panel members were terrific and dynamic and almost seemed to be calling for a sort of library revolution… but not quite. I can’t really put my finger on what exactly they were calling for, but it would be a change from what we have now, whatever it is. Change in many directions, from the way librarians negotiate to the structure of ALA itself. I think this is a conversation that needs to continue and develop into action, not just conversation. Do we, as librarians, already have a centralized place to continue this discussion? Perhaps our diffusion problem is as symptom of our fragmentation. But then, what form could this imaginary conversation venue take in order to accommodate the most librarians and the greatest diversity of librarians?