Librarian Way

This is fun! While researching what librarians are saying about social software, I came across Librarian Trading Cards in a note on Steve Lawson’s blog. He also links to a librarian trading card of Michael Stephens on flickr.

This is a fun way to market librarians as cool people.

Librarians can contribute to LISWiki or to Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki.

Meredith Farkas, who blogs at Information Wants to be Free, started Library Success to collect and organize information about successful programs and problem resolution:

This wiki was created to be a one-stop-shop for great ideas for librarians. All over the country, librarians are developing successful programs and doing innovative things with technology that no one outside of their library knows about.

LisWiki was started on June 30, 2005 by John Hubbard to

to give the library community a chance to explore the usefulness of Wikis. It is not intended to replace or detract from the Wikipedia Library and information science (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_science) articles (or those in the printed LIS encyclopedias for that matter), but exist as a niche encyclopedia covering library-related issues.

John Hubbard says this is not a war. There is room for both as they have different purposes. See his clarification on the Web4Lib list July/037642.

Be sure to check out ALA Chicago 2005 on the Success Wiki.

Bernie Sloan posted, without comment, three Library Journal links to the Web4Lib list: Is This “Gormangate”? ALA President-Elect Draws Fire, The Power of Blogs, and Feedback, from the April 1, 2005 issue.

Whatever one surmises about Michael Gorman’s stance on technology in libraries and about librarians use of technology, he has certainly brought the ALA, libraries, and librarians into the consciousness of many who may never have thought about librarians and technology. You have to be controversial and stir things up if you want people to take notice. In Is This “Gormangate”? ALA President-Elect Draws Fire, Andrew Albanese mentions that there were over 1000 responses to the subject on Slashdot—not a librarian Web site, but a geek Web site. I believe that is good for us. I don’t think Gorman has done us any harm. We need people who can get attention from outside our world of librarianship. We need to be in the consciousness of a lot of people if libraries are going to survive the Internet. A lot more people know that librarians blog. Isn’t that progress?

I have enjoyed reading books written by Gorman, such as Our Enduring Values: Librarianship in the 21st Century, and Our Singular Strengths: Meditations for Librarians.