Playing catch-up with Thing #15

I read most of the material Heather provided through the links on the Thing #15 ELL page. Now that the stuff has marinated a bit in my brain, I don't think anything I read sums up my thinking on Library 2.0 better that Rick Anderson's article "Away from the Icebergs." Here's the salient quote from the end of his piece:

"No profession can survive if it throws its core principles and values overboard in response to every shift in the zeitgeist. However, it can be equally disastrous when a profession fails to acknowledge and adapt to radical, fundamental change in the marketplace it serves. At this point in time, our profession is far closer to the latter type of disaster than it is to the former. We need to shift direction, and we can’t wait for the big ship of our profession to change course first. It’s going to have to happen one library—one little boat—at a time."

I'm not inclined to elaborate at length (that's different for me), I'll just add that this ELL program, the up-grades to our sites, our blogs, our Loft 2.0 features, and the like are exactly the right things to be doing now.

I have two worries:

Are we leaving the non-digitally connected segments of our population in the dust? Are we moving too fast for them?

What happens when we lose the power grid? Even a temporary shutdown wreaks havoc on things. I see more of that happening not less. (Yeah, a pretty dystopic view of the future, isn't it?)

On that cheery note...
Ciao. Barb