I love that song.
In other news, a large part of class dealt with this issue of librarians being at war with… something? and is focusing on this battle with publishers. This doesn’t seem to be a new idea, and I’m not feeling the urgency. I’m one of the weird people who submitted “No – librarians aren’t in a war” to the poll.
So, what are we supposed to think libraries are at war with? I’m not getting it. I guess there’s a lot of infighting about best practices, eBooks, and the like, but infighting is not a war. Maybe the “War” that Mick Jacobsen is talking about is the war for the community? But who, then, is the foe? I am so confused, and it’s this confusion that led me to vote ‘no’ on the poll.
Maybe someone in the comments and I could discuss this. I hope it’s not the old “kids these days watch too much TV” complaint because that’s just tired. Don’t worry about what kids or teens or adults or whoever are doing; just focus on your library and make it better. It’s like Field of Dreams all over again, only instead of baseball, it’s a library.
Mary's talking about libraries 
Hi, Mary — I had a vague feeling that one of the war’s “theatres” was that between the library and the community, a fight to get the community to realize the awesomeness of the library. Almost saying, “Community, we’re fighting this fight FOR YOU, and we’re willing to fight against your disinterest because we’re FOR YOU!” ??? Just me???
That definitely clarifies this war idea a bit. I was concerned with the idea that libraries were fighting the community itself, which seemed counter intuitive. I like this idea of fighting disinterest, but I’d rather say something like “promoting interest” or “creating interest.” Using terms like “war” is extreme to me, still, but maybe that’s the kind of terms needed for desperate library times.
Hi Mary,
I wanted to leave a short note trying to explain my blog post on Tame the Web.
I wonder if it would help if I had used the analogy “can’t see the forest for the trees” instead of battles and wars. I meant that librarians are caught up in ebooks and so on and forgetting their true mission, the awesomfication of the world (mostly kidding – but David Lankes’ mission statement in the Atlas of New Librarianship is pretty close however for what I consider a good mission statement for librarianship). Battles are the trees and the war is the forest. eBooks, physical books, etc. are great tools to improving our community, but they are just that, tools. Somehow librarianship has gotten caught up in the tools and not the reason.
I hope that helps.
I would be interested in more details on the discussion you had in your class.
Regards,
Mick Jacobsen
Hi Mick,
I’m very excited you posted on my blog! The “forest for the trees” analogy definitely makes things more clear. I’ve always been wary of extreme language in metaphors, and war is about as extreme as it gets.
Your thoughts that librarians get too caught up in the eBook “crisis” is something I think is absolutely true. If you feel compelled, you should check out my latest post (“Eighth Class Response”) to see more of my thoughts on the issue. I hope you don’t mind a little ranting.
The discussion we had in class that week mostly revolved around socratic seminars and how to make them happen, but we also read Marc Prensky’s article “In the 21st-Century University, Let’s Ban (Paper) Books,” an article in which Prensky advises universities to ban paper books in favor of eBooks. The article is also problematic in that Prensky seems to suggest that the main reason for doing this is that the first library to implement such a decree would become the talk of the nation, and he only briefly discusses advantages such a system would have for the students.
Your War metaphor was soon brought up by our professor after we discussed the article and were thoroughly upset about eBooks as a whole. I think it helped tone down the room and made us step back and focus on bigger issues at stake in libraries.
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