Everything I Need To Know I Learned Online

February 20th, 2005

I actually stood up and clapped after reading this article by Christine Chrystie R. Hill, who is the community manager at WebJunction.

“The spirit of sharing more quickly and efficiently, across all kinds of boundaries, online, is reminding us that we can and should be doing better librarianship. All of this, and I don’t even get to detail the absolute thrill of learning, publishing, and discussing within a culture of shared responsibility, ownership, and collaboration.”

“You think you don’t have time for all these blogs, online discussions, RSS feeds, and web sites. But at the risk of sounding like a late-night infomercial, you can’t afford not to. We have two essential and critical problems in our profession. First, especially in public libraries, we are plagued by a scarcity model. We never have enough staff, time, resources, collections, or patrons…we never seem to have enough of anything. Second, we use the resources we do have to do work and solve problems that have already been done or solved. The good news is that in an online community we can take the skills we all have been trained in to help others and help ourselves.”

Go Christine Chrystie. Get busy. It’s your birthday.

A note to LJ publishers: Don’t think that I let the irony escape me that you are continuing to publish great articles on RSS, weblogs, and online communities and not put these methods into practice. I’m just thinking about the number of readers that you would gain (not to mention the increased revenue stream) if you:

1) Started an LJ weblog.
2) Had RSS Feeds for new articles and your news section.
3) Applied this knowledge to enhance and advance the profession.

2/23 - Post edited because I spelled the authors name wrong. Thanks Susan and sorry Chrystie.

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