23. Reflect on your experiences

I think I've already done a lot of reflecting and commenting on the experience as I've been going but maybe I can summarize a few central issues as a way of wrapping things up.

I think this has been a good experience and very worthwhile. I've been surprised in quite a few cases by things I didn't know or didn't appreciate sufficiently before I started this program. I'd number Flickr and del.icio.us as two highlights of the 23 things and I feel that I gained some appreciation for blogs (as a communication medium, not as an information resource) along the way. I also learned about some tricks and tools that I could apply to known quantities, adding feeds to my Yahoo! page or spinning off info from my LibraryThing collection.

A couple of things could use rethinking. It doesn't feel like there were really 23 things and I think there are more things we could be looking at than those described. It seems that blogs, feeds and kindred resources were really the same thing repeated several times. And I'm not sure that it is possible to get much out of some of these things by sitting alone at our computers. I didn't attend any of the drop-in sessions, so maybe this was addressed in this way, but a few items might have profited from a demonstration or maybe some sort of group activity. Further, the program could have benefited by substituting some newer things for some of the more tired ones. Finally, more library-related examples of how to apply some of these resources would have brought the lessons home more.

Beyond the program itself, I had a few thoughts about issues about where we, both the UCSC Library and libraries in general, can go from here. One lesson I took away is that this is a continually shifting landscape and it will take constant vigilance to keep up with developments. Tools and programs for keeping up-to-date are needed. we can't stop here. I hope through a couple of services I signed onto that I'll be getting updates about new developments but I think something programmatic needs to be put into place, perhaps an updated 23 Things every summer.

How do we decide which tools to adopt and which to pass by? I think the answer lies in developing a good sense of balance. We need a sense of playfulness and adventure. with the slack to forgive wrong turns and dead-ends, but we also need a sense of responsibility and an understanding that at some point we need to settle on certain solutions in order to build reliable, stable services. We also need to balance easy, one-off solutions that work for specific cases and in the short-run with the deeper, organization-wide developments that require institutional commitment. Putting some of my work on an outside blog-hosting site may have little service implication for the organization, but we may need eventually to select a blog platform to support library-wide. The short-term and long-term solutions come with entirely different considerations. We need a development model that leaves room for the first but provides a structure for the latter.

As a last consideration, I think balancing past and future is going to be critical to the survival of libraries. So much of the talk about where we are going appears to be completely dismissive (and sometimes ignorant) of our past. And there is also much foot-dragging that misses what in the new technology is integral and supportive of our traditional roles. We need to embrace the future with respect for the past, and not adopt what is new simply because it is new and not hold onto what is old just because it is old. Here the balance comes from a better and deeper understanding of what makes libraries libraries (and not Amazon or Blockbuster) and then select those services and the related tools that move us in that direction.

So, I'm done. Where do I pick up my gift certificate?