For the last two days, I've spent most of the workday "at" an online conference all about utilizing handheld technology in libraries, specifically, mobile technology. I've learned about mobile apps vs. mobile web, augmented reality, geolocation, eReaders, and Pecha Kucha. My head is spinning, and if it stopped long enough for you to hold a gun to it, I probably couldn't explain any of it coherently.
I don't own a smartphone. I don't text. I have a Twitter account, but until earlier this week, I rarely thought to look at it, and I (almost) never posted to it. And we all know how new this blog is. However, in spite of my general social/mobile tech backwardness, I have begun to accept that these things are the future. Specifically, they are the future of my chosen profession, and as much as I'd love to moulder in a dimly lit room organizing stacks of books for the next forty-odd years, that is simply no longer an option.
One of the presenters at the Handheld Librarian III conference, Sarah Houghton-Jan, stated it best when she said that it didn't matter if we used these technologies. A significant percentage of our patrons do, and that percentage is growing every day. These patron want and expect us to be able to work with them within a social networking and/or mobile environment. And as yet another presenter said, in response to a question about dealing with coworkers resistant to change: if you are unhappy with change, you will be even less pleased with irrelevance. It is far too early in my career to be risking irrelevance, so even though looking at code makes my head hurt, I am doing my best to get up to speed.
And so, in pursuit of this goal, I've begun to attend every free (or in the case of the Handheld Librarian III, relatively inexpensive) webinar, webconference, lecture, etc. I can find. I'm reading technical literature that I thought I would be able to throw aside after I threw off my regalia, and I'm forcing myself into the social media sphere, one baby step at a time. I'm nowhere near ready to be the "mayor" of anything in Foursquare, or to scrawl virtual graffiti on a wall for others with the right geolocation app to find, but I know now that these things exist, that they are possible, and most importantly, libraries can use them. We can take these technologies, mold them to our purpose, and at a time when ill-informed pundits are speculating on the extinction of the library, and we can beat them at their own game.
For now, I've unprotected my Tweets, and I even have a fellow librarian I've never met(!) following me (although I'm afraid she's likely to be pretty disappointed with my output for a while.) I will be setting up my "professional" Facebook profile, and starting to research the possibility of getting a smartphone and texting/data plan when my current contract is up next year (don't tell the short one!)
Tonight, though, my brain is full, and I need a good night's sleep. I can pick up HTML and PHP for Dummies later.
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