… which explains the inactivity of this blog.
I went to IFLA’s World Library and Information Congress in Quebec City in August, and it was amazing. The most interesting thing I came away with is that all libraries truly are the same … I should have remembered this, as I had this realization last year too. But, I guess I needed to be reminded. It doesn’t matter if we are academic, public, special, legislative or government libraries, the issues and challenges we face are very similar. Since IFLA I have been letting this thought simmer at the back of my mind. We divide and consider our libraries in these very specific categories, and for the most part this serves the libraries and our clients well. But, what are we missing out on? What can the small government library learn from the large legal library? What can the large academic library learn from the tiny volunteer-run public library? I am convinced we can all learn more from each other if we just took the time to talk to each other more.
Thinking about this reminded me of my experiences last November when I participated in the Manitoba Public Libraries Conference. As I work in a small government library I wasn’t expecting to find that so many of the issues we face in our very different libraries would be so similar … from marketing services to teaching clients how to use our resources to the pace of technological change to budget issues, I discovered that while our libraries may serve different clientele and be managed very differently (boards for public libraries, managers/directors who report to ADM’s for gov’t libraries), at our core we are the same.
And, “the same” means we are all in the business of providing relevant and accurate information to our clients while dealing with all of those same issues.
So, it isn’t like this should be news to me. But somehow I need regular reminders about it.
