Steven posted this on Library Stuff today “Remember when you went to a library, browsed, signed out a book and left? Before the dot-com explosion, the library was a knowledge warehouse. But times have changed, and libraries are struggling to adapt".
Modern libraries are offering more than just books these days. People who wish to watch a movie come in to borrow DVDs, music listeners borrow CDs and mothers bring their toddlers and babies for rhymetime and wriggle & rhyme sessions. Others also come in for computer lessons. What I am trying to stress is as a librarian these days, I need to be multi tasking and have the necessary skill sets to engage with my patrons. It is just not circulation duties alone. To advance in my career I will need to be more involved in community activities as well as fulfil my social, educational and even mentoring role in society.
Discovering the concept of knowledge management helps in sharing information and knowledge whether tacit or implicit among colleagues. We collaborate to create records, and the huge institutional knowledge that our long-serving staff members have. However this is still fairly new in my library and my superiors have attended workshops but yet to share what they have learnt from the sessions.
The recent spate of disasters in Christchurch have also made us thoughtful of how we should rescue our collections during such times. We have brought this up at a few staff meetings. Copyright and file sharing legislation which will take effect on 1 Sept is going to be a contention of how libraries will manage the public access computers. It will indeed be a challenge!
For me, subcribing to mailing lists has been really advantageous as it keeps me informed of all other issues too and makes me realise we are not alone.
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