Connecting Librarian

I am a borderline Gen Xer.  Depending on which study you look at, I am sometimes listed as a Baby Boomer.  Labels don’t matter all that much, but I have always felt more affinity to Gen Xers and it always made me feel a little bit younger to label myself as such too.

But recently I have been feeling like I’m not much of a Gen X-er either, especially in relation to what others of my generation seemed to be focussed on.  Quite often I feel more of a digital native like my kids, I am soooo comfortable with most technology.   I game like they do, although my regular gaming is more online board games (which is definitely in line with my demographic), although I do get with the kids and play X-Box or Nintendo DS on the odd occasion.

I guess I am a bit like the person who migrates to a new country and just goes overboard in embracing their new home.  They learn the national anthem, try to live like a person in that country does, picks up the lingo etc - they basically begin a love affair with their new home and I guess that is what I have been like with Web 2.0.  And that has helped me to feel more like a digital native than an immigrant.

So what’s the problem?  I think its that the shine is going off the relationship a bit.  Probably for a few different reasons.

Firstly, the development of Web 2.0 tools seems to have slowed down.  Twitter, which I love is probably the last big thing I jumped on board with.  I signed up to Friend Feed, but for an organised person such as myself, I just find it to chaotic to work through.  Everything else considered Web 2.0 has been around for a while, some like blogs have been around for over 10 years!  Where’s the next big thing to catch my interest again?

Secondly, even though I am well entrenched in Web 2.0, most of my workmates, friends and family aren’t and I get so frustrated with this.  They don’t see these tools and their potential the way that I do and I can’t find the way to help them to do so.  I spoke to a new staff member whose former workplace didn’t even have a website!  Everyone still seems a long way behind and I feel like I’ve been in those space for a long time too.  When is it all going to catch up?

Maybe I’m just tired, maybe I need a holiday (coming up in 4 weeks, yay!) or maybe its all just in my head.  Would love to hear what you guys have to say on the topic, are you experiencing the same types of things?

I have been so busy with changes at work and with my study tour coming up in 2 weeks, that I haven’t had time to blog. As per usual, everything that I want to write about comes up at the same time, so I’ll start with a “you should read this” post.

Helene Blowers at Library Bytes, points to a post by Joyce Valenza giving a short list of 2.0 rules to live by. Very useful hints.

Jenny Levine at Shifted Librarian points out the importance of virtual worlds, such as Second Life and gives compelling reasons why librarians should be at least exploring them.

Karen Schneider from Free Range Librarian posts an open letter to the Library of Congress on ALA TechSource, in response to a public meeting they called. She makes some very interesting points about “bibliographic control” and libraries.

Michael Stephens at Tame the Web blogs his 10 Tech Trends for Librarians in 2007. If you want to know what to be looking into, this article must be your first stop.

Finally, there is a lot of buzz going around the blogosphere about Twitter, a communications gateway. I’ll let you read more about it through the various pro and con posts doing the rounds. These include: Lifehacker, blyberg.net, David Lee King and BlogCritics. What’s my verdict? Don’t know yet, but I figure it could be useful for my study tour and even if not, its worth playing with, just to know what’s out there and being used, so I’m joining up right now!