Thing 2

I've spent 2 weeks trying to create and move an avatar. I am moving on now.

One thing I noticed in the articles on Library 2.0 is the comment that "users add value." We all want a user centered library; there are many standard jokes, including from the musical, "The Music Man," about the librarian needing to hold on to the books. How can we straddle the gap between the users of the new technologies and the readers of books?

Users add value even though it makes choices for the librarians more difficult. We began to prioritize as we moved into the computer age, spending more and more of our financial resources to make computers available to patrons who were making choices to become more computer literate. Now we have even more choices to make. Patrons can use home computers to request materials, and they no longer need to come into the library except to pick up the items. By embracing our new technologies, are we also signing the death notices of our buildings and printed material?

But wait, there is a significant number of people in rural areas like ours who are unable to get internet at all. How does that enter into our equasion?