The challenges related to technology which were identified in Michael\u2019s white paper \u201cThe Hyperlinked Library\u201d felt very familiar. Having worked with technology for a very long time I\u2019ve sometimes felt these myself and have helped others overcome these challenges. Techno-hesitation is particularly vexatious. It\u2019s not just libraries which face this problem; for many of us this can be as simple as knowing when to make a purchase. Do I buy that new iPad now, or do I wait? There\u2019s risk in everything we do, but with new technology the risk often seems insurmountable. The cost associated with this risk often drives techno-hesitation\u2014for an individual this can be a few hundred dollars, and for a library this can cost much more. Risk management techniques can be used to manage the hesitation (along with the other techno-challenges) while opening the doors to more and better conversations with members. The culture of perfect combined with the cost of not being perfect leads to stagnation. <\/p>\n
Jason Pontin\u2019s experience at All Things Digital (as described by Wade Roush in a 2005 Technology Review<\/em> article) interesting\u2014especially considering the sponsorship of the meeting (the major technology columnists for the Wall Street Journal<\/em>). It reminded me of my first week in library school. At Syracuse distance learning students spend about ten days on campus at the start of the program\u2014on the first day of class I was surprised to find so many of us with laptops in hand in the classroom. This wasn\u2019t a new idea for me: in the business world we all brought our laptops to meetings \u2026 but nearly nobody in attendance needed to do that. Even my undergraduate experience as a distance learning student didn\u2019t prepare me for this; other than incidental contact in class-based discussions hosted on a First Class<\/a> system, students didn\u2019t really have much contact among themselves. Fast forward a few years (I completed my B.S. in 2006) and I\u2019m in a classroom that\u2019s totally engaged: we\u2019re engaged with the instructor in the room and we\u2019re engaged with each other by following (and contributing with) a class hashtag on Twitter. <\/p>\n This could actually be a real problem for the Hyperlinked Library model\u2014it\u2019s so easy to create connections and conversations without the library that it becomes more difficult to make the library a compelling part of the conversation. This shows clearly in the section of the 2009 ITHAKA report we read\u2014researchers are clearly communicating with each other, but they feel they\u2019ve built those conversations without the library and don\u2019t necessarily see the value in the library now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The challenges related to technology which were identified in Michael\u2019s white paper \u201cThe Hyperlinked Library\u201d felt very familiar. Having worked with technology for a very long time I\u2019ve sometimes felt these myself and have helped others overcome these challenges. Techno-hesitation is particularly vexatious. It\u2019s not just libraries which face this problem; for many of us […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.henare.org\/libblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.henare.org\/libblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.henare.org\/libblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.henare.org\/libblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.henare.org\/libblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.henare.org\/libblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.henare.org\/libblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.henare.org\/libblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.henare.org\/libblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}