The Echo Chamber - Overcoming Dysfunctions of a Team

So I’m following the whole Echo Chamber thing with great interest. More posts (http://thewikiman.org/blog/?p=454 & http://agnosticmaybe.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/dismantling-the-echo-chamber/ & comments)…

Again, we’re talking to ourselves, but more importantly, we’re talking among ourselves. That allows us to refine what it is we mean and want to say… which is a good thing. As Ned Potter (the wikiman) and Andy Woodworth (and probably other folks I've forgotten to mention) pointed out, maybe the echo chamber is useful in refining the ideas until what finally gets beyond this circle of librarian bloggers is a better idea.

It reminds me of my surprise to read that one of the “five dysfunctions of a team" was an unwillingness to disagree ("fear of conflict") - see http://librarywebhead.blogspot.com/2009/12/overcoming-five-dysfunctions-of-team.html.

Well, the first dysfunction is a lack of trust. Once you establish trust among team members, they all have to feel comfortable enough to voice their concerns -- to engage in debate. Without that debate, some very poor decisions can be made. It’s the old “the emperor has no clothes” syndrome. There are a plenty of folks who loathe confrontation and seemingly too many who thrive on it. But neither way brings us where we need to be. We have to trust one another and support one another enough to have constructive engagement. As people on the team, one of our roles is to speak up, another is to support and respect all other members of the team, regardless of whether or not they argue against our position.

I’ll commit. Among the community of librarians – let me say, I trust you. I might be right, I might be wrong, but I’ll say what I think and I’ll trust you – not only to support me when (from your perspective) I hit the nail on the head, but to take me on, to comment, blog, tweet, whatever, when you thing I’ve got it all wrong. Just let’s remember tone, so we don’t scare any confrontation-averse folks (myself included!) from the discussion. There are so many brilliant people out there in libraryland, even if they don’t speak up online – let’s harness that energy! This debate isn’t about tearing one another apart, it’s about building something better -- together (oh yeah, and keeping the library relevant in the 21st-century +).

The value of libraries in the 21st-century

So I also asked the people I'd mentioned (who weren't big library users) to describe to me what it was they'd ever loved about libraries or what would bring them into libraries.

The first person I asked - my voracious reader who felt disaffected from her local public library these days - what she used to love about the library. (Because she'd mentioned liking the library so much as a child...) She talked about the sense that it was a space of limitless discovery, that whole unexplored universes were available to her on the library shelves, that no ideas were off-limits. She could just lose herself in the stacks.

I remember that sense of wonder when - as a child - you enter the library and see this dizzying array of books, colors, and opportunities. So that made total sense to me.

For my second person (yes, my husband), who doesn't read a lot, but who likes doing things in his workshop, he mentioned the concept of a "tool library" like one we'd seen (in Berkeley?) when we lived out in California... This reminded me of a concept I've had in mind for quite a while now, using the library as a community exchange center for programs like BookMooch, where people can trade books, but there is the enforced accountability of doing it through something like a third-party organization and where the delivery can be easily managed by the library. Especially, if the library starts working to send materials by mail, like NetFlix does. But that's a whole other topic, because there's other useful aspects to the NetFlix business model besides the material delivery process.

That second thing might sound like a stretch, but let's get all of the ideas on the table, before we knock any of them out of the running. The point is to ask people what they need from a public, community space like a library... what needs aren't being met elsewhere, just to get a much broader array of ideas.

Libraries Engaging the Community

I love this TEDx presentation by OCLC librarian Chrystie Hill. If you haven't already watched it, please do. She's speaking outside the echo chamber (#echolib) about the issue that's central to libraries today - remaining relevant. In it, she talks about the role of library in connecting people to one another. She says so many other things (so much more eloquently than I can), I'll just put the YouTube video here.

BTW, if you'd like to link to her discussion of the TEDx Columbus presentation, go to http://scanblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/tedx-columbus.html

Making Libraries Relevant in the Future

You’re not going to like this post, even if you think I’m part of the “echo chamber” (not sure I qualify - I’m not one of the “cool kids” I follow – you know the ones who do presentations at all of the library conferences).
First, Seth Godin committed no “sins” in his posting on the future of the library when he wrote the following:

What should libraries do to become relevant in the digital age?
They can't survive as community-funded repositories for books that individuals don't want to own (or for reference books we can't afford to own.) More librarians are telling me (unhappily) that the number one thing they deliver to their patrons is free DVD rentals. That's not a long-term strategy, nor is it particularly an uplifting use of our tax dollars.

Though I know a lot of my fellow librarians took him to task for saying that libraries need to become relevant (see: http://thewikiman.org/blog/?p=433), I don’t think they should’ve. I think they should’ve realized that this is how many people feel (those outside of the echo chamber of librarians and highly supportive library patrons).

Honestly, Seth spoke for America. We’ve known since the OCLC 2005 perceptions of libraries survey that the library’s “brand” = books.
But if that’s the case, libraries ARE irrelevant, because In this day and age, most of the people I talk to (who aren’t librarians or related to librarians) see Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or bookmooch-type sites as better places to find books online and more locally, they usually get their books from friends, colleagues, book/tag sales, or bricks-and-mortar book stores. (With the rise of the ebook readers that grab content directly from retailers like Amazon, we are growing even less relevant...)

Among my in-laws, for example, (though most of them really like to read) not one of them regularly goes to the public library or uses the library as their primary source for books.
Many Americans don’t have that much time or will to read a huge collection of books anyway. So maybe they get in a dozen or two books per year, best case scenario. They can usually afford to purchase or borrow those books themselves without using the library. They’re more liable to consume information and entertainment through the internet, television offerings, radio, or movies.

I’m going to confess something right now -- I don’t read. At least not the way you’d imagine a librarian would read. I laugh when anyone asks me to recommend a book, simply because I’m a librarian. I hardly ever read books. At least, rarely for pleasure, and rarely in full. I usually read magazines, online postings/articles, or segments of books (ebooks included in this) for reference purposes. I don’t have either the time or the energy to do much more. I’d say that I read complete books probably about 6 times a year. Maybe half of those times I’m reading something fictional and entertaining. Mostly for entertainment, I (gasp!) watch television or movies.

So, books... Not a good brand for libraries if they want to be sustainable. I'm guessing that’s not something that even most of the great folks I'm fans of in the Library2.0 echo chamber would admit. I feel badly about saying this -- I’m not saying this to make my colleagues feel badly or to say that we don’t need to support books at all, but rather I say it because we all need to understand the world from a non-librarian perspective in order to understand where we fit into the lives of most people.

I asked two people close to me why they don’t go to the library. Neither of these people were librarians.

The first person was my husband. He’s not a voracious reader, but he likes to read on occasion and – more importantly – often needs reference materials for his projects. But two problems with that: (1) things like the wiring diagram for our ’69 Charger are needed long-term so it’s better to buy the service manual than to seek it at the library; (2) his recent interest in learning how to become a gunsmith was completely unsupported, not only by our local library’s collection, but by the library network’s collection. All of which brought to mind (for me) how many stereotypically male hobbies and interests are not well-represented in our library collections.

How about a voracious reader with more mainstream needs? I talked with a good friend of mine, who’s extremely bright and interested in array of titles and topics. She seemed a perfect fit for the uber-patron. But when I asked her about using the library and she said that no, she never went to her local library any more. I asked her why (over coffee at a Barnes & Noble) and she responded that she didn’t like going there. Besides the library not offering the positive experience of a bookstore like the one we were in at the time (ambience-wise), she felt like she was putting the librarians out – like the library was their private club and that they didn’t care for people “borrowing their precious books”. While that might be a commentary on a specific public library, she had an even better insight about the problematic business model of the public library. She had so many interests, she told me, that she would start several books simultaneously. Sometimes she’d get through them, start to finish, other times she’d put them aside (or one aside) for a while. She wouldn’t be able to finish up in the limited loan period of the library book. She couldn’t predict how and when she’d be able to finish a book. Work stress, family obligations, and life in general sometimes got in the way. I know, I know, it's possible her library might've allowed for online renewals to help deal with that, but it's one more thing for her to remember and deal with (not to mention that it might not allow the renewal if the title was wanted for another patron or it was a new book or the library's system just didn't support online renewal).

So, instead of going to the library, she gets her books by buying them or through an informal network of acquaintances who hand them on when they’re through with them. The informal book exchange has the added benefit of making her feel more connected to the people involved in the exchange. Plus, it provides her with reader’s advisory from people who know her personally.

Hear Freakin', Hear! UXD in libraries

For those of you who haven't yet heard of this top tech trend for 2010, take a look at Library Journal's new column "The User Experience" - http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6713142.html - about user experience design in libraries.

Author Aaron Schmidt, the digital initiatives librarian for the District of Columbia Public Library, points out that every aspect of our interaction with a library user is affected by design, including such seemingly mundane policies as having staff wear name tags. The whole article is worth a read, but I love the teaser Schmidt leaves us in preparation for his next column:

"The thing that unites Renner, Ranganathan, and all these UX elements is empathy. If I've convinced you to take your role as a library experience designer seriously, this core value should be your launching pad. What does this look like in real life? You need to listen to and observe your community in order to develop an empathetic focus on people. My next column will be about this important process and how libraries can truly use it to innovate."

Library Journal, you got it right! We need a column like this for librarians right now. We might be a decade behind in discovering the power of user experience design, but we can catch up - c'mon everyone, let's spread the word.

Integrating Social Media Into Your Website

Some notes from the January 19th TechSoup (free webinar) on Integrating Social Media Into Your Website:

Social media account management issues

· The use of social media tools is only effective if it is implemented as part of a broader communications strategy for your organization

· Even if you are just contemplating use of social media tools for your organization, it is worth it to reserve your “virtual real estate” & to do so using a consistent naming strategy (e.g., always branded “CtStateLibrary” or whatever – Twitter, Facebook, etc.). Virtual web2.0 real estate should dovetail with domain name management.

· When you set up accounts, never do it with an individual staff member’s email address (e.g., set up an email alias on your domain for web2.0 account building). Preferred method = have a paid staff member (not a volunteer) do this.

· Have an inventory of all online venues & information about who has ownership access to the accounts. The username/password accessible to backup person (but probably not stored in a larger mgt spreadsheet, due to security concerns) in case primary account holder is unavailable.

· Keep control of your virtual real estate (see the previous 2 points)

· Control and backup your data, as with any other web content. Your Facebook account should be considered another one of your data repositories. But back the data up redundantly and keep it under your control. Web2.0 tools are free and may disappear.

· Privacy: “honor ‘theirs’, assert ‘yours’”. Don’t mistakenly give away your followers’ / fans’ information. Add social media to your privacy policy.

· Monitor and track “channels”. Where is growth, engagement? What are trending keywords/interest points? Monitor usage, statistics, etc., regularly (this firm looks at how the channels are doing weekly)

· 3 essential processes for mgt:

o Message calendaring: have a 3 to 6-month horizon. Your social media messages can have a narrative arc. You must sustain consistent messaging across channels. Send users back to the website.

o Publishing matrix: integrated way for deciding which messages go to which online channels. A spreadsheet. (see: http://www.aspirationtech.org/training/eadvocacy/templates/publishingmatrix for an example)

o Social media dashboarding: pull together tracking tools on a single site/page to view thinks like keyword tracking, what people are saying about your organization, etc. Use iGoogle or NetVibes page. Radian6 is an excellent tool, but is costly. Ask is your messaging propagating? What are the reactions? Who are your targets, opponents, decision-makers & are you getting through to those you need to get through to?

Deploying social media

· Start with easiest = Twitter, then more complex = Facebook

· Only start if you can commit to regular maintenance of channels

· Each channel has a different purpose, but these purposes depend on the organization

· Always use the social media channels to funnel users back into virtual real estate you hold – e.g., it is a bad practice to put your whole press release on a Facebook status update. Instead, have your press release on your website (or blog) and then use a less formally-worded FB status update with a link to the full press release or tweet out the link to the press release.

· One reason to always move interested users back to your primary web real estate is that those are the only places you actually control. It matters if, for example, Facebook disappears, you only want to have lost references to primary data, not the primary data itself (which is under your control if it is on your website or blog).

· Marketing is key – social media channels, like all initiatives, require marketing to be successful.

· Realize that in social media, you do not control the message. Your audience can say what they want.

· There are several levels at which you can use social networking tools like Facebook, twitter, etc., ranging from the lowest level of end-user engagement, to the highest (greater engagement is an important goal for an organization)

o Announcement service

o Lightweight communication

o Collaborative hub

o Immersive community engagement

· There were several great “spectrums” the presenter offered to make the role, implications, and effects of different web tools clearer to us. All of the spectrums included the elements:

o Twitter

o Facebook

o Blogging

o Email

o Website

Twitter is liable to have the users “closest to your organization” following you. Websites are on the other end of the spectrum, with completely anonymous users arriving at pages from search engines, who may have no interest in your organization.

· The tone & voice of the Twitter channel is generally “first-person singular ‘I’”. It is informal and fun. On the other end of the spectrum (the website), there is little spontaneity, the tone is formal – usually the third-person for the organization or first-person plural “we”

In short, for social media tools to be used effectively and sustainably, they must be planned for, managed, and maintained. They must be part of a broader organizational strategy and must be regularly measured to see if they are meeting the needs of the organization. There is one organization (the Humane Society) that the presenter cited as having a very effective social media presence, but they’ve actually hired a full-time person solely for this purpose.

(Since we can’t even convince libraries that they need to have professional webmasters to manage the websites they control – I don’t foresee libraries hiring full-time social media coordinators. Too bad.)

BTW, Techsoup is offering this excellent webinar again on Feb. 4th. See: http://www.techsoup.org/learningcenter/webinars/index.cfm

The digital literacy divide

My mother is a very intelligent woman.
I don't say that just because she is my mother, you understand, but because she is. She has an intense sense of wonder, curiosity, and playful optimism about the world. She loves her library. She loves books. She loves learning.

But - mea culpa - she stands on the other side of the digital divide from me and my sister (and most of America, these days).
My mom was a registered nurse. She'd gone to nursing school back in the day when that was how you became a nurse. She was very good at what she did. She was one of the first nurses to be trained in recovery care for angioplasty patients (a couple of decades ago, angioplasty was a fairly new procedure).

She retired as early as she could, however. Partly because she was driven out by technology - by computers, to be more precise. At that point, the field of nursing had changed so much that despite her expertise, she would've had to return to a traditional college program and get a bachelor's degree (as she put it, learn to take a temperature after 20 plus years of nursing) just to get ahead at the hospital. But that was ok, because she'd never really wanted to be a manager. But when the computers came, and the workflow changed accordingly, it was yet another pressure on her. From what she tells me, I gather that with repeated training and repetition of the procedures, she was able to learn how to write up her lab slips on the computer. That was in an age before email was a part of the workflow for most people, so I suspect it was a terminal/mainframe setup, in which she learned (as she puts it) "which buttons to press". Then she retired. Yes, there were other reasons, but the rate of technological change and the rise of computers in the workplace were important factors.

After she retired, email and the web arose as key elements of the workplace, but by then, she'd had no reason to learn how to work with those technologies. For years now, my sister and I (both librarians) have served as "her internet". At last year's Web2.0 Expo in New York, I listened to an anthropologist discuss how in rural India, those who are illiterate use those who are literate and computer-savvy to "be their internet". They'd dictate emails to a child, who would type them in and send them off, then read the replies aloud for them. Though my mom is quite literate in terms of reading, this description sounded eerily similar to what my sister and I had done for my mom.

My mom straight up wasn't interested in computer literacy, so my sister and I had let it go. She'd laughingly refer to herself as a "dinosaur" or protest, why do I need to know how to do that? I'll just write a letter (even buying herself a surprisingly inexpensive electric typewriter at a tag sale to make letter writing quicker). Briefly, I'd imagined teaching her how to use email and the web. But when I thought about the cost of getting her a computer and internet connection, especially one that would fit into her snowbird lifestyle (this was in the days before NetBooks and reasonably-priced laptops), plus the pain of trying to explain it all to her and support her without getting inappropriately snippy (since my daily help desk battles had already left me a bit burnt out on supporting such technology), it just didn't seem worth it to me. I think it was the same for my sister. She had it worse than me, after all. She wasn't a systems librarian, but a reference librarian, already somewhat overwhelmed by the challenges of guiding patrons through the vicissitudes of technology all day long. So when my mom needed information on her own medical conditions, my sister & I just did the research for her and printed it out. She understood what the articles meant and gave us enough information to conduct meaningful searches for her, so it all worked out.

Last night, I called my mom to see how she was doing. It turned out that she's decided that she really needs to learn use the computer and to figure out email. For all of her social groups these days, they ask for her email address and it's gotten to the point where she's missing out on important information by avoiding this whole internet thing. (And I think she's a bit embarrassed that she sees others in her generation and even older than her who understand how to use email and the web.)

In addition, she's taking an adult education course in anthropology right now - on sub-saharan africa! She loves the course and the professor, but the additional readings she wants to review are all online. I felt a pang of guilt as I listened to her and realized that - once again - my mom was missing out because of her lack of basic internet literacy. And here I work on the web every day. I advocate for librarians to embrace Web2.0. I don't spend much time thinking about the many otherwise competent adults out there who need help with these basic skills.

When my sister and brother-in-law spent the holidays with her, they brought her down to her local public library and got her hooked up with a Yahoo email account. (My mom's description was something like "they told me which buttons to push".) She'd tried to send my sister an email, which she told me had never made it through. She had no idea which buttons she'd hit. or how she'd done what she'd done (or not done). She hadn't wanted to "interrupt" the reference librarian, whom she described as being very busy, but eventually, she'd had to in order to check her email. She said it took her almost an hour (which is the limit on public computer use at her library), but she'd successfully managed to send an email to my sister. Unfortunately, she couldn't understand what everything meant or how to repeat the proces the next time she went to the library. Moreover, she has to sign up for a computer ahead of time, which poses yet one more barrier to her - one more process to learn - one more frustration to face.

She said that she didn't want to keep "bothering" the librarians (yes, she may be extra sensitive to this because my sister is a public services librarian herself).
My mother and I commiserated about the overworked, underpaid, much needed role of public librarians as my mother recounted her tale. So none of this is to cast aspersions on her local library (which she adores) or her librarians (whom she holds in the highest regard).
Still, think of how difficult it must be to be in my mother's position, though -- to feel like you can't figure out what every one else seems to have no problems with, to have to ask someone for help to do something that is basic to 21st-century life.
I thought that her local public library might've offered basic computer classes, but she said that when she asked the librarian about a basic computer class she was told that the library had been trying to put together a course on helping people use their laptops. But this doesn't help someone like my mother, who isn't there yet. My mother asked me where she might be able to find a class that she could take that would help her.

So, does anyone in the Clearwater, Florida area know of any place someone like my mom can learn the basics of getting comfortable with a computer, email, and the web?

More importantly - in an era when the public is questioning the very need for libraries, why aren't libraries at the forefront of the digital literacy issue. Why don't we develop a nationwide digital literacy initiative? It could include a preset curriculum that even the smallest public libraries could use to get people online.
This seems like a no-brainer. Maybe it's already out there and (as so often happens with great library programs) under-publicized? If so, PLEASE CORRECT ME!
If not, consider this a call to action.

Top Tech Trend = User Experience Design

Doing my usual - following conferences from afar (thx to Twitter & the interwebs, at least I don't miss everything).
LITA held a discussion on Top Tech Trends this morning... for more, see http://litablog.org/. I felt validated by the discussion since one of the topics that dominated the discussion was user experience design. (& yes, I both saw & agreed with the tweet "@gluejar: Depressing that usability is a trend in 2010. 10 years late"... true, but this just supports my oft-pronounced theory that library technology is 10 years behind... )
Amanda Etches-Johnson referred to automated usability testing sites - Usabilia (http://usabilla.com/) & Crazy Egg (http://crazyegg.com/). I'd heard of Crazy Egg, but not Usabilia. That one's new on me. It has a free, five-page trial. If one of you uses it first, please give me some feedback. I'd love to hear about it.
Another thing I saw from afar was @libraryfuture's Prezi-based presentation (mobile libraries). It inspired me. I'd written a long, boring bulleted "what to post where" listing to give our public services librarians a feel for when they should put things on our news blog vs. our Facebook page vs. our Twitter stream (& how those updates automatically cascade from one level to another). I sent it out to my Web2.0 group for feedback & didn't get much. So I made a Prezi to make the same information appear more compelling. (http://bit.ly/6ushBe) Imagine if we all did our memoes & policies using a tool like this! (BTW, it was a real pain to get used to Prezi at first, from my perspective. Then again, I'm not a gamer & it may be somewhat more intuitive for folks who are. Still, I think that it was all worth it.)

A look back at my last decade working with library systems

Like everyone else (e.g., my Twitter buddies), I've been thinking about the past decade as a whole and what it's meant. I started by thinking about the arc of my career in library systems, such as it's been and then, more importantly, began to think about what this past pivotal decade has meant for libraries.
The first bit - my own career - I look back on with a combination of nostalgia, pride (intermingled with the occasional cringe-worthy memory), and amusement. I never thought I'd still be in the field 11, going on 12 years after I began with a library automation network. What I remember about working with library systems in my little part of the world at the turn of the century (1999/2000) is listed below. (Feel free to comment & correct me, btw):


* I was working on a Tandem mainframe-based system. We had pretty much just finished converting everyone from what we called the "old" dumb terminals to a pc-based system, with terminal emulation to support our still-text-based Integrated Library System. The "buzz" in libraries was all about client/server technology, with the occasional minority voice advocating for the use of thin client systems that seemed to be more of a compromise between what worked best in each environment.

* I believe we had just deployed our first generation web-based catalog. Before that it was the old text termiinal-based OPAC.

* I had poo-pooed the original Unix web server we had, thinking that we needed a Windows server because, after all, everything was about the GUI in those days and the command line unix just seemed hopelessly outdated. So I remember the switchover to a Windows NT web server being a great (if in my mind, overdue) move. How funny that I'm now pushing my current place of work to move from a Win2003-based web server to a Linux box! What goes around comes around, I guess. Another great lesson in folly on my part - I used to have a certain prejudice against those who used Macs. I'd graduated from the little self-contained IIse boxes to the use of pcs. I was quite certain that Apple would soon be dead and that those who clung to this technology were misguided and just couldn't handle the sophistication of the Windows environment. (Note: I'm writing this from my home Mac mini & I did battle with our IT department in the past year to get a MacBook Pro for work. But yes, I run a Windows XP Pro virtual machine, since we're predominantly a Microsoft shop.)

* We were grateful that Y2K never turned into a disaster, but there'd been a lot of work behind the scenes to ensure that the code on our mainframe, for example, had been updated to ensure a smooth beginning of 2000. And then there were the patches to be applied to those pesky spreadsheets, and so on. I'm not a programmer, so I don't know how close we truly all came to disaster.

* The websites were built on static HTML, with no separation of style and content. There was no blogging yet, at least none that we really knew about. The easiest sytem, such as it was, was to create a site on Geocities, which - if I recall correctly - had an online wysiwyg editor. That was probably our closest thing to blogging in that time. I had a personal Geocities site, and published up information about our wedding. At the time, HTML seemed complicated to me! ;) Our libraries - the more sophisticated ones - used FrontPage to create their sites. I think there were a few outliers using Dreamweaver, but FrontPage was the solution that I came to know best. I'll be honest - you could actually do a lot with FrontPage Server Extensions to control things like subweb permissions, for example, though I don't know how many people exploited its fuller potential. We used table-based layout & the replacement of one image with another through the basic javascript to make it seem like you were pressing a button onmouseover seemed pretty slick to me at the time. "Push technology" and personalized web portals were just showing up, but they would fail in their first iterations, only to become regular features in the web world in slighly altered ways. Now "push technology" = RSS & many websites require you to create a login but most of these sites don't expect you to anchor your whole online life there, with the notable exceptions of personalized homepages like iGoogle and - of course - Facebook.

* For inventory control and offline situations, there was an emergency "Auxiliary Circulation" setup that just cached barcodes. The inventory control module required a special scanner device that was completely devoid of any intelligence, but mobile. You could bring it out to the stacks and scan in barcode numbers. You'd then bring the device back to a circ terminal & plug it in. Plug & play was just beginning & was imperfect. I don't even think we had USB yet (or it wasn't widely adopted). I think we were using the PS2 mouses (& that was an upgrade from the serial ones). We used parallel ports for printers.

* We were using peer-to-peer networking, had no firewall yet, and felt that "security by obscurity" was good enough because - after all - who would target libraries? The word was already getting out about such practices not being good adequate, but we hadn't fully drunk the KoolAid at that point. There were libraries who were already embracing the NT-based hierarchical networks, but we weren't there yet.

* There WAS no wireless. Let me reiterate. There was no wi-fi anywhere, let alone in our libraries. Heck, cell phones were still more of a luxury than a requirement in Connecticut and beepers were the more populus solution to keeping in touch. They seemed revolutionary though, because you could easily carry them everywhere (they were small enough to be worn on your belt). I recall beeping my husband with the numerical code "143" (for "I love you" - character count in each word, get it? Everyone at once, now -- "Awww...." Did I mention we were newlyweds?) SMS? texting? Are you kidding me? I don't know if the technology was even available, but it certainly wasn't a part of our original cell phone plans and I had never heard of it in those days.

* Highspeed internet consisted of 56K Frame Relay setups that were very expensive but cutting-edge for our libraries, as I recall. Bandwidth was ALWAYS an issue.

* The annual Computers In Libraries conference was - if I recall correctly - more about the integrated library system and hardware components than about the internet. People kept saying that the future was the web, but we were all certain that the lack of bandwidth would bring everything to a grinding halt. The revolution in web technologies at the time was really taking hold in business (we were at the height of the dot com boom in the late 90s), though often it was difficult for us to convince libraries that non-mediated use of web browsers was a worthwhile service to provide for the public. Heck, they used to have rules to prevent the public from accessing their email on public computers. Some libraries went so far as to block sites like hotmail.com. Email, BTW, was usually considered to be a client software-based activity. The people who worked for our library network used a third-party website to hook into our email remotely from the libraries, but just to give you some perspective - there was no Gmail.

* The dot-com crash wouldn't begin until later in 2000. When it did occur, the naysayers who felt that the prospects of the web's long-term success were overstated said "I told you so".

* IM and IRC were already in practice - even a little old-school, but IM was mostly for those participating in the old AOL, or at least that was my impression. I'd used IRC even back in '94, when my sister was going to library school (not library information science school) in Pittsburgh. But for anyone who's still trying to get your colleagues to embrace IM, let them know that it's been a technology widely used by the public for a very long time.

* Rocket book ebook readers became popular among my coworkers, but there was a serious lack of content. As a result of the lack of popularity, many predicted that the overwrought ebooks trend was DOA.

* The cutting edge in devices was PDAs, particularly Palm Pilots... smart phones were just about to make their first appearance. I think I got my first one, which had a Microsoft OS & a mini-version of Word, Excel, etc., through TMobile, in 2002 or 2003.

* We were about to embark on a cutting edge virtual reference endeavor, which we began in 2001. Messaging a librarian online was a brand-new and highly controversial idea. A decade later, it's still controversial for some librarians.

* The "Systems librarian" wasn't really a fully-formed concept yet. We still believed that catalogers would automatically be the best people to run our libraries' technology. Library school programs - for the most part - didn't offer much in the way of systems training. It was as though you could tack on technology learning after the fact, after the degree. That it was a simple and easy set of skills to master - just memorization of processes and steps rather than a way of looking at the components of the technology and understanding how they relate and how they could be improved upon. As a result, librarians with any technology skills whatsoever were fewer and further between than they ought to have been. It helped my career, but it didn't do great things for our field.


Overall, there are so many lessons I've learned about my work in library systems in the past decade. But the one that stands out for me most - the one that's most worth passing on at this point - is that all technologies transform. There are many technologies that appear, gain a minor foothold, but because they are somehow in conflict with how people have previously envisioned the technology, are not immediately embraced. When they don't gain immediate populus acceptance, the naysayers point to this as proof that the idea itself is flawed and that the technology will never succeed. Ultimately, however, the kernel of what was good in that technology - the impulse that initially drove it forward - remains. A new way of getting at that kernel - a redo of the initial technological concept with better marketing, packaging, or techniques finally appears and at that point - the public having been primed to the concept already - it becomes popular and successful (example, the ebook is back and more successful than ever; its much-cited lack of sensory appeal be damned). So Second Lifers, don't despair- virtual worlds will reemerge, too. Will your Second Life real estate increase in value? Perhaps not. But somewhere, what is effective and compelling about the concept will reappear.