We are All Librarians Now

We are all photographers. Download some apps and use Instagram.

We are all moviemakers. Kindergarteners use iMovie.

We are all journalists. Get a blog and a content curation tool.

We are all librarians. Organize it, people!

But it isn’t as easy as we thought…not even for me (a 20+yr career librarian).

Today, as I curated content on Scoopit (so easy- just click the button), an article on MOOCs didn’t post into my MOOC topic but posted in a different topic. Ask yourself- Who has time to go back and fix that?

With a free content curation account, I have three topics: The Future of Libraries, A Librarian’s MOOC Scrapscoop, and Transliteracy: Physical, Augmented and Virtual Worlds. Suggestions for my topics come up (depending on the search terms I place in each). Why would my click on an article suggested for MOOCs appear in my Future of Libraries topic stream? Who knows or is even the least bit interested? But I am reminded of the careful details necessary for cataloging information. Every detail matters so that the correct information is given to the information seeker who deserves accuracy.

Nobody cares anymore! (I think or I worry.)
The convenience of one click content curation tops the years I spent learning in library school. And what tops that? How many “likes” did you get? This type of thinking encourages disposable media.

Thanks for listening to my rant. I need to talk to an old newspaper guy who remembers what the world once was. I would like to live in a world where people care about accuracy and authority more than what they personally have to say at the moment.

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