tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3831412.post3761827470503508135..comments2023-10-11T03:43:28.302-04:00Comments on Confessions of a Science Librarian: Shirky, Clay. Here comes everybody: The power of organizing without organizations. New York: Penguin Press, 2008. 327pp.John Dupuishttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09829396649299444557noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3831412.post-14963199965412705042008-05-29T13:34:00.000-04:002008-05-29T13:34:00.000-04:00Hi Chris, thanks for the comment.It is definitely ...Hi Chris, thanks for the comment.<BR/><BR/>It is definitely hard to find a balance between old and new -- between trying new things and sticking with the old ways.<BR/><BR/>On the other hand, libraries have always changed and progressed, have always tried new things. Are social tools necessary for libraries? Who knows. The only way we'll find out is to try a whole bunch of things and see what happens.John Dupuishttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09829396649299444557noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3831412.post-32305226632490761752008-05-29T08:41:00.000-04:002008-05-29T08:41:00.000-04:00It sounds like I could use this book myself - I wa...It sounds like I could use this book myself - I was just thinking about my own personal reservations about "2.0" and social networking tools, and realizing that they mostly stem from unfamiliarity (I'd been ahead of the curve for a while, technology-wise, but with the burst of evolution among social networking tools, I'd fallen pretty far behind), from a genuine curiosity about what, exactly, they <I>do</I>, and, frankly, from institutional culture.<BR/><BR/>Your comments about Shirky almost admitting that "old ways" have value, and then backing off, helped me formulate a question that's been nagging at me: in a given library, when you consider the balance of "old" librarians versus "new" librarians, what effect does that have on acknowledging the benefits of the old/new ways? I'm one of the "new" librarians, but I dismissed social networking tools as having real use partly because the culture here has only a grudging acknowledgement that some of these new tools have value (or perhaps it's not a grudge; it's simply that nobody really is <I>interested</I> in trying it out).Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com