Technology Plan
In many ways, staying current with technology is immensely easier today than it was in decades past. The omnipresence of smart phones, the internet, and media in general means any innovation will rapidly spread through society, either taking hold or fading away far faster than in ages past. We see someone develop a new app or idea and within months it’s ubiquitous as though it’s always been a part of life.
You could say in this sense that there is a sort of division between popular technology and practical technology. What I mean by this is that while popular technology spreads rapidly and can easily be grasped and adapted to, practical or professional technology often remains a bit obscure and harder to adapt to. Partially this is a matter of business. Much of popular technology thrives on open and free methods to propel their spread, while professional technology still sees fit to leverage absurd and extensive fees for their usage and adoption. Popular technology can be freely experimented with, whereas the adoption of professional technology is always a risk due to the costs involved and the potential for irrelevance. Thus you see many libraries eagerly—if not a bit ham-handedly—attempting to incorporate social media while being more mixed on the adoption of maker spaces and surveying software which requires a large upfront investment before they can even truly be experimented with and explored.
As we saw in our last discussion, libraries as a whole, despite their graying populations, are still often near and at times even ahead of the technological curve. This hardly means we can rest on our laurels but it also shows that the conception of libraries as something hopelessly stuck in the past is far from reality. After all, maker spaces represent a potential revolution in learning by promoting experimentation and hands on understanding as opposed to being stuck in an endless world of books and tests and lectures which only appeals to a small subset of the population. And who is leading the charge for the development and implementation of maker spaces? Libraries! This might seem baffling to someone on the outside as maker spaces have nothing to do with books, but they make sense to librarians because our mission has always been first and foremost to facilitate learning and education beyond the classroom, allowing people the means to freely explore their curiosities and grow, enhancing the community as a whole. Books were once the most revolutionary means of doing this, and when computers came along libraries quickly implemented computer labs, and now we see them doing the same with maker spaces, changing the conception of libraries as being merely book warehouses to being living and active centers of continued learning and growth.
Of course, all this is quite tangential to the actual core of the assignment. As for myself, keeping up with emerging and changing technology will be something that comes naturally as part of being a librarian. Much of this comes simply from technology diffusing through society at its current rapid pace, but of course librarians can’t simply be passive. Thus it also becomes necessary to keep current by conducting research and keeping abreast of technology websites and publications, perhaps even attending technology conventions if the library sees fit to fund such an expedition. Even outside of this, there is the possibility of visiting other libraries and institutions to see what technologies they’ve picked up and how they’ve chosen to adopt them, learning from their successes and failures.
One of the keys to understanding and adopting technology is the ability to actually experience and experiment with it rather than simply reading about it or being given a demonstration. While the later certainly is more advantageous for companies, it leaves librarians in a position where they’re prone to either over or under estimate a technology’s worth. When someone tells you how great a computer is you might get excited or alternately roll your eyes at them, but when you actually get to work with that computer you begin to learn its strengths and weaknesses and gain an idea for how it could enhance the mission of the library. Thus experimentation—however it may be achieved—is far more crucial than research alone.
To provide a more formal summation of all this, the key points would be:
- Keep current with developments and trends in social media
- Observe technology websites, publications, and conferences
- Stay in contact with other libraries, institutions, and organizations so as to learn from their experiences. Conferences are certainly one way of doing this, but maintaining personal contacts is also important as this facilitates a more frank discussion of experience and opens the door to visits and hands-on experimentation.
- Consider the problems and shortcomings currently experienced by the library and then look for ways these might be overcome. If there are no ways currently in existence, then innovate! Thus one not merely keeps abreast of current trends but begins to push the curve forward.
- Similarly, consider the mission and purpose of the library and how this might be enhanced. This can be trickier as it’s a much more open-ended point and can lead to the adoption of superfluous and unnecessary elements. Still, being open is important.
- Experiment and learn wherever possible, whether from others, on your own, in classes, in training, on the bus, wherever possible.
Following these basic precepts I feel confident in being able to keep pace with technological evolution, adapting advances for the library and looking ahead to how future advancements might also serve to enhance and improve the library.