Week Six, Thing 12 : The Cult and the Skeptic

I watched Librarians 2.0 : a Manifesto and read The Annoyed Librarian's post, The Cult of Twopointopia.

I think that the video is exactly the sort of thing that the Annoyed Librarian is railing against, and I could not possibly be in more sympathetic agreement with her annoyance. The platitudinous mantras, the New Age soundtrack, the grab at counter-culture street-cred in the use of Burning Man festival photos, all reek of corporate fad marketing. I'm not claiming that there's some Evil Force behind the video, but only that, like a corporate marketing campaign, the video seems designed to put your critical faculties to sleep while filling your soul with the lust to buy, or, in this case, the lust to buy-in, to accept a set of untested assumptions and refuse to consider counter-arguments.

Like The Annoyed Librarian, I am not a luddite. I've been using social networks for several years, and I find them both useful and fun. I think librarians can probably benefit from learning how to use all sorts of web resources. But, I agree with AL that the function of librarians is not simply to mirror their patrons, uncritically sharing every enthusiasm. A librarian needs to know not just how to use Twitter, but when and for what purposes to use it. In those cases where a printed dictionary serves a specific need or inquiry best, it's foolish to insist upon ignoring that source and going to an internet resource instead just because "patrons like the internet better." A professional's job is not simply to give their client what feels comfortable and familiar, but to figure out what the client needs, and use professional knowledge to help fulfill that need.