Keeping Up with Your Homework, and Why It's Important

Although I have worked in technology for 14 years--from high school, through college, through grad school, through full-time employment--my educational background, as well as most of my interests, have centered around reading. All my degrees are in one breed of English--creative writing, medieval British literature, and now Technical communication/rhetoric. Like a duck to water, then, I read stuff when I need to learn about it, in digitization and technology. If I need to learn about digital repository trustworthiness, I dig it out of Google--and read it. If I need to know about World of Warcraft Cataclysm and when it comes out--I read it.

Either way, in my opinion, the world is at one's fingertips in the age of the Internet. We can find information about anything, and we can read about it. I consider it the height of irresponsibility--gross negligence, really--if someone trained in a discipline and working in that discipline does not also pursue as much information from the Web as s/he can. I was speaking with a librarian friend the other day about the Trusted Digital Repositories report and checklist because I'm preparing to attend a workshop for which these two things were requested reading. Now, these are things that I've encountered a few times before--first because I read about this information, and then in discussion with other librarians.

I have been repeatedly stunned, however, by the surprise in librarians' faces when I say, "This information is online." I will often receive links from them that contain reports from the early 2000's, and they send this to me as if this would be new information, because it was new to them.

I expressed this, in our conversation about the trusted digital repositories, to my librarian friend, who is also involved with digital initiatives, and he said that it's very common for librarians not to have read up on what they're practicing. I'm shocked by this. While I recognize that my background in various fields of English studies probably advantages me in literacy adaptability and critical thinking skills over, say, someone who is in Biomechanics, I have a lot of trouble understanding why a librarian would not pursue as much literature as is available to learn more about what is a fascinatingly evolving field.

So, if you're a librarian, and you don't read--get off your hiny and get to work. Start reading. What you learned from your MLS studies is going to expire--no matter what, it WILL expire, and you'd better be equipped with all new information you can find--even if it's free, Googled info.

(Thank you, Google, for your Palpatinian influences on organization in structure.)