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9/07/2006

The E, I or R question?

Well, I left the poll up here for nearly two weeks hoping that as more folks wayed in, there would be some concensus. But as you can see, the results are pratically dead even...



I suppose you could draw all sorts of conclusions from these results, but since I'm no expert I'd rather not conjecture. What I will share with you are my thoughts to this question... and as colleagues will tell you, I'm not shy on stating my opinion.

To me the basket that holds the greatest promise is two fold ...

  • If I view "longevity and future" from a pure usage and numbers perspective, then Recreation clearly holds all the eggs.

  • But if I had to answer this question for the Library's funding source, then I'd throw all my eggs in the Education basket.

Information as a standalone entity in my mind is not even in the picture. It's a service area that's already receeding and will soon become standard access on every type of communciation device.. .. Smart phones, blackberries, IM reference bots. In fact, the race to stay the leader in the information game was lost with inventition of Internet.

I will agree, as the poll shows, that libraries need to have their eggs scattered in all three baskets. But evenly? I'm not convinced. In looking at the future, I believe we need to weight our services more towards the liesure and educational scales and realize that providing "information services" is not a value in itself. But rather information is more a product of serving the other two.

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