2012 Best Practices for Government Libraries

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BEST PRACTICES 2012
librarians and information professionals are left feeling disoriented and discouraged.
Yet I believe it’s possible to re-orient ourselves in order to re-engage in the
changing nature of information and access.
I think pushing our own boundaries, professionally or otherwise, involves going
through three stages (not unlike Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ five stages of grief:
http://www.ekrfoundation.org/five-stages-of-grief).
I’ve conveniently made them all start with the letter ‘A’:
Acknowledge – recognize that this change in accessibility, mobility, and
community has happened, and is continuing to happen. You can still feel
resistant, angry, scared, excited, and any variety of other feelings. The
important thing is to acknowledge that we perhaps don’t have a full
understanding of the information environment any longer, that there are
many other participants in the information world these days. We aren’t the
gatekeepers any longer. The information world is not the same as it was
even five years ago.
Accept – to accept is subtle yet profound. Acceptance is a portal through
which you can actually start to take some action. Acceptance removes the
judgment of the situation – good, bad, or otherwise – and allows you to
actually start to see how you can work with the changes happening.
Accepting is an opportunity for us to learn, and perhaps to act differently
going forward. Acceptance can actually be quite exciting and energizing.
Advance – once we’ve accepted the situation(s), then we can take action
without dragging along resentment and other baggage. We have the
opportunity to take more control of our direction and our future, and we can
feel less of a victim of our circumstances. We can start to work more
effectively within the new information environment.
What is this new environment, and how do we engage with it?
As we’ve already touched upon, the information landscape has truly shifted – and I
think there are still many of us who have not fully accepted and embraced this
shift. The information experience for a great many of our users is completely
different from what our experience may have been.
Have you heard the expression, “it’s better to ask for forgiveness than for
permission”? To me, this encapsulates a major aspect of the new information
environment. And this is where the concept of pushing boundaries comes into play
for us as information professionals.
For example, let’s look at the dynamics of social tools. Anyone with access the
Internet has the ability to connect with anyone else on the Internet, and to create
content. Think about that for a moment – anyone can create content. What we
often forget, deny, and/or shy away from is the fact that we, as information
professionals, can be content creators as well – very powerful content creators.