Libraries under threat

Libraries in America are under threat from the Global Financial Crisis. Funding is being cut, opening hours being cut and staff losing jobs . In a climate where statistics are proving that customers are using Libraries more and more how can government justify the closing of such an important service to the community.

The latest library fighting the cut of funding is Ohio Public Libraries, the staff are fighting back having a plan and using technology to reach as many of their customers as possible. They have a plan and are trying to stop the reduction of services throughout the state. Helene Blowers latest blog post and following information on Twitter #saveohiolibraries are using the technology available to their advantage.

Ray Bradbury has joined the cause to save Public Libraries, surely with a well known author mounting the fight maybe if more authors got on side then the government would see that we are an important institution that customers need and not something that they can just slash in their budgets when times get tough.

We will be watching what happens in Ohio with great interest and with all Public Libraries in the US.

how does the other see it.

So it seems social networking is creeping its way into the psyche of many organisations as a legitimate means of communicating information in a fast and formal/informal manner. As I was doing a bit of catchup on my 'professional reading' following a meeting with my fellow technovisionaries, I came across an interesting post in regards to blocks to social networking. You can find the blog post here on Michael Stephen's blog.

The crux of it is a public department using a social networking too, in this case twitter to promote an event in the community, but having social networking blocked on its own public computers. Think if the library in question was hosting an event and people wanted to comment on it whilst at the library, with participants asked to comment on their website/feed?

This is yet another example that highlights the control many public libraries face: being under the jurisdiction of another governing body. It means any communication that goes out for instance from a public library feed needs to meet the governing body's standards. Its still a very murky area, but we'll have to see how it will pan out.

Going up?

Well, a month or so has passed since my last attempts to enlighten and enliven peoples knowledge through my musings and enthusings. So much it seems that our much lauded 2.0 has become a 3.0. as mentioned in by Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg. But where are my patch updates dare I say? are we ready for such things? Some say nay to this increment of integers such as a Mr Scobleizer, in his piece on why this is wrong.

So what do you all think? the simple advent of computers and the Internet has seen many libraries struggle to meet the ever flowing development in not only hardware and software that the technology savvy socialites utilise everyday. you could almost compare library service eras to that of the Internet to see how the two compare. It would be interesting to see how well we as information professionals stack up against the ever changing tidal waves of Internet movements.