Librarians Aren’t Software Innovators?!? What?!?
Hello, Adam. I’m j. I’m a software, well, information technology innovator and a librarian. If you don’t believe that, perhaps some of my friends can vouch for me. If your RSS dinner meshes with my crowded schedule, perhaps I can prove to you in person that some librarians do cool things with technology.
Y’all, let’s keep Steven’s thread going. If you’re a librarian and you do cool things with technology, chime in.
Addendum 3/29: I met Adam tonight. On the one hand, he kept saying he was kidding in his post, but on the other hand, he kept making negative, broad sweeping generalizations about librarians. I don’t think I was able to convince him that librarians can be technology innovators. Let’s keep this thread moving.
March 29th, 2006 at 11:52 pm
I have reread that post and I see statements like “Some of the most interesting blogs I now read are by librarians,” and “I now realize that I can find cool software ideas by searching for blogs and websites with the word library in the URL.” If these statements can be considered negative, I apologize, but I don’t see it. My point, as shown by the question mark at the end of the title and the listing of several examples of innovation in libraries, was that I was seeing that librarians WERE innovators and that this was surprising to me. If my being honest enough to say that I was surprised to find that the common stereotype was wrong is negative, I again apologize. I still think that the line about “running naked through the stacks” was a pretty obvious clue that the post was written in an ironic tone of voice. I don’t write with smileys, so I guess that the intended humor could somehow be missed. You have to admit that saying “I’m only kidding guys” was an explicit signal.
So, here is a the most straightforward way to read that post: “Gee, librarians are clearly software innovators. That is surprising to me, but I appreciate what they are saying and doing with the web and software, and therefore I make a point of reading their blogs.” Sorry, but that is a pretty boring writing style, even if there is less chance of confusing some readers.