The north star?
Resources, tools, solutions, technologies, widgets — the amount of THINGS that are available and becoming available that could conceivably improve teaching, learning, and scholarship at your university is growing exponentially.
Our job as Library and Information Technology professionals is to efficiently comb and vet this universe of stuff, pick out the good things that might benefit our community, help our patrons access and use them, and move on.
But how do we efficiently evaluate a plethora of potential resources when the forms, formats, categories, and structures we’re used to — the conceptual scaffolds that historically have helped us determine value — are changing as fast as the content in them? If I used to select books by skimming paper slips that came from the book wholesaler, how do I even know about a new software resource in an unheard-of genre needed for a research I don’t know about (no slip comes for that . . . ), much less evaluate it?
What essential things hold true in a world of changing formats, content, roles, assumptions, users that might help us orient ourselves?
I propose what doesn’t change–or changes least–are the core and elementary processes of learning and scholarship. Not the particular forms or methods (professor stands at podium, uses a slide projector . . . patron consults print reference books, takes notes on 3×5 cards) but something more essential.
I suggest both library and information technology organizations tend to isolate themselves from these core processes but now need more than ever to (re)discover them or risk not being able to steer their ships in a rolling sea of information.
David Wedaman