"Boughey, Alan" wrote:
> I thought this had already happened across the whole country!
>
> Not sure you really need professional staff to help people use ICT on a
> day-to-day basis, as long as they are there to manage the service and set
> standards for the non-professional staff. A lot of the help people want is
> pretty mundane stuff, e.g printer gone wrong. I think it would be a waste
> of money and valuable skills to have professional staff dealing with that.
I am afraid if librarians see ICT as some kind of technical problem about the
kit and caboodle then it will be just as well that they are banished to the back
rooms of call centres setting standards for other people. When I go to the
library I need to find out about how to search for informaion, what to do when I
find some, how to know that its any good, how to use telnet there to access my
email account, how to use government interactive services, how to develop my
skills in self publication, what the currency is of the web based catalogue, how
to find research data on my interests....how to use the net is not transparent,
and I don't want a dumb-downed version on my TV using push technology to raise
my consumption, but the choice to go to any library and be able to interact with
local community and global material using features and facilities under the New
Library branding, with content and resource discovery tools that are understood
and can be explained to me if necessary, just like a library. Perhaps we should
explain this to the proponents of the new managerialism in local authorities
seeking to reduce budgets, and ask the government to explain how the rhetoric of
New Library and the reality of local authority expenditure cuts can be managed.
Bridging this reality gap will be a major task for the new public libabry
network agency.
Martin P Dudley
Research and Innovation Services
9 Chapmans End Puckeridge WARE SG11 1SR
+44 (0)1920 821766 (and fax when mailbox online)
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To each their need, from each accordingly to their ability
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