Week 10 Thing 23 (Impressions)

I am 62 and definitely one of the older librarians to take on 23 Things. I don’t know if my experience has been uniquely arduous or if there are others of the brittle-bone set who have expanded their vocabulary in more ways than one during this encounter with technology. I do know the experience has been meaningful in ways that are at the same time diverse and ongoing. Let me say first that I am proud to have finished, albeit barely under the wire, on time. The knowledge I gained here and the directions it points to make me more relevant to my times and have given me the skills I need to grow with the requirements of my job as it unfolds.

In terms of the way 23 Things is organized, from the specific to the general, I was at sea until the very end. Some people reason and learn from the specific to the general. Given a tray of diverse and beautiful beads they will choose some that work together and create something integrated and meaningful. These same people are not boggled to learn a mathematical formula and apply it to specific problems without any understanding of how or why it works. Other of us need to see the broad picture before we can make sense of, and remember, the parts. I would have been greatly helped in my acquisition of the web based tour of tools and concepts if I had done items 15 and 19 first. There I could see the scope of things. There was a definition of words and tools. Instead I bungled around with no idea of the significance of what I was doing and that made it hard for me to remember things, even after I’d done them.

Where was it in the 23 Things that the statement was made concerning the necessity for us to let go of our rigidity if we are going to be successful in employing the tools of cyberspace? I forget, but I felt the truth of that statement all through the program. I don’t know how successful I’ve been. I’m trying to open myself up to a dimension of reality that is changing faster than I want to stay glued to a monitor to learn. That’s really the problem.

As I back off and look a bit at my place in time I see that I was born at the moment that the boys at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos were completing their incredibly exciting collaborative scientific brain child on nuclear fusion (or was it fission?) and the US Army was altering the B29 to carry the ‘payload’ to Hiroshima. Some of those guys didn’t really ‘get’ the significance of what was happening through them, to them and around them until it was all over.

Is it really surprising that my generation views cyberspace with as much trepidation and caution as it does excitement? And it is incredibly exciting. And compelling, those possibilities for collaboration, research, sharing of resources, organization of data and play, play, play as my grandson says. I can’t imagine what the span of his life will embrace in terms of changing what it means to live on earth. The first words he could read were ‘on’ and ‘off.’

The truth is that the library has no choice. We must not only embrace the opportunities afforded by the internet, we have to run it. We are in the information business. Cyberspace is our world and we all need to learn to live there with ease. But let’s continue to keep the storefront a great place to be. And don’t throw away that microfilm machine. Until every last little bit of that data, in every little by-water town USA is digitalized, our history and its significant events are not safely preserved for the review of future generations. And it’s not available on the internet. Who’s going to pay for that, I wonder?

And personally, I hope I’m a goner before we’ve been forced to do everything online. I enjoy depositing my money in person at the bank. I like sitting on the sofa surrounded by bills and checkbooks and circulars, watching sit-coms and stuffing the wrong checks into the right envelopes. And I still like cash, thank you very much. I don’t want a world in which everything that I need is dangling by an invisible thread to a screen from which at any time can be displayed the message, “Sorry, your browser can not find the site you’ve requested. Please check your settings and try again.”

I am grateful to have been invited to participate in the 23 Things program and to launch my own cyberspace learning. I’ve become fond of blogging, though it takes time. I expect I will be exploring its application to other aspects of my life as well as the library pertinent stuff. I love the wiki possibilities and, now that I know about them, I will use them. I’ll keep working with the 2.0 in 15 Minutes a Day, though not every day. And the online spread sheets will be useful. The mashups are almost too much fun. Maybe someday I’ll make my own. The RSS feeds are a handy item. I’ll stop talking. I’m launched. Don’t block my radio waves.