I am at another slog point in the conversation. I am thinking about a couple of things — the future of education and government information librarians; and what aspects of government information access should transcend all levels of government.
To the first, I am pondering one of the first blogs I posted back in January here. 10 months later I think my mind has shifted on a few points — particularly when it comes to the issue of formats. Jim’s responses to my earlier 75 day posts have got me reconsidering my positions.
It is somewhat amazing that we started this conversation three and half years ago with dueling articles in the Journal of Academic Librarianship about the future of the federal depository library system….
Which brings me to my second musing — the future of government information service in libraries — especially as framed by century long traditions of formal depository libraries. Here, I think the creation and distribution mechanisms recast the traditional library approaches radically. I think we should be working towards some kind of overarching standards, protocols, expectations for all library-based government information services — regardless of which level of government it comes from, or in seeming contradiction to my statement above, format.
In other words,the pressures of e-government services delivered in library settings set new expectations for our users and how we are trained as professionals. It is a shift from a world of government information organized by static bibliographic standards to one driven by a dynamic information liquidity/exchange where users’ particular needs combine with available government information resources/services to create a continuum of knowledge possibilities.
To be continued…
See you on Day 61
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