How to Avoid the Freak-Out: A Long-Term Look at Short-Term Perspective
Presentation Type
Presentation
Conference Track
Other
Description
Our jobs are changing, changing fast, changing faster than they have ever changed before. In academic, public, and special libraries, we can all be tempted to uncritically embrace the new, the hip, the shiny; or to cling securely to the familiar way we've always done things. Most would like to be somewhere in the middle, but when the loudest voices in the conversation come from the extremes, how to do that isn't very clear. Printed texts, scholarly journals and peer review seem to have been around forever. In fact these practices arose in other disruptive times, times that featured huge changes in the way we practice science and publishing. Now, the participatory web is pushing us to think about concepts like authorship and authority in new ways. By viewing library practices from the historical and cultural contexts they evolved in, we can better understand what has changed (the cost of making information public) and what has not (the public's need for editorial filters and commentary to help them evaluate new knowledge). In times like these, we find it useful to remember our history, not because the past needs to be protected or uncritically conserved, but because we haven't always done things the "way we've always done things." Understanding the context of change and upheaval that led to our current practice can give us a framework, or structure, for managing our response to change and disruption today.
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Start Date
2-5-2010 9:00 AM
End Date
2-5-2010 11:00 AM
Persistent Identifier
http://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/20009
How to Avoid the Freak-Out: A Long-Term Look at Short-Term Perspective
Our jobs are changing, changing fast, changing faster than they have ever changed before. In academic, public, and special libraries, we can all be tempted to uncritically embrace the new, the hip, the shiny; or to cling securely to the familiar way we've always done things. Most would like to be somewhere in the middle, but when the loudest voices in the conversation come from the extremes, how to do that isn't very clear. Printed texts, scholarly journals and peer review seem to have been around forever. In fact these practices arose in other disruptive times, times that featured huge changes in the way we practice science and publishing. Now, the participatory web is pushing us to think about concepts like authorship and authority in new ways. By viewing library practices from the historical and cultural contexts they evolved in, we can better understand what has changed (the cost of making information public) and what has not (the public's need for editorial filters and commentary to help them evaluate new knowledge). In times like these, we find it useful to remember our history, not because the past needs to be protected or uncritically conserved, but because we haven't always done things the "way we've always done things." Understanding the context of change and upheaval that led to our current practice can give us a framework, or structure, for managing our response to change and disruption today.
