Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Thing 2

How old is this John Blyberg? Srsly.

I am intrigued by his perception of, and want to see his definition of, “the dwindling elderly population.”

I’m fascinated by his theory that we can serve that apparently tiny group of folks, as well as the soon-to-be retiring baby boomers, with the same level of service that we have been so far, while simultaneously shoveling money into Library 2.0. After all, there are how many boomers moving into the dwindling elderly population – six or seven? These soon-to-be retirees, otherwise known as working adults, have been getting a significant share of our services. In terms of staffing, time is most certainly money.

I would love to see his breakout of the projected financials for his library – or any other library that intends to accomplish this.

Failing that, I’d like to see what he used for population statistics and projections, and a brief paragraph as to why, exactly, those soon-to-be retirees were named the 'Baby Boom.'


"Many of the problems we face are self-imposed – L2 assumes that we have solved them."

If you want to get metaphysical, all library problems are self-imposed by the fact that libraries exist. L2 assumes nothing. It is a concept of little brain.


"We’re going to have to find a way to harness the “peer-to-peer” abstraction in ways that can benefit all of us."

Um, okay. I can't disagree with that vague and sweeping statement.


"So, finally, what is Library 2.0? Is it just a collection of ideas? Is it a movement? A revolution? Maybe a little bit of all those things, and more. It may not be the right label, but whatever IT is, it IS."

OMG. If what the first commenter says is really true . . . "John Blyberg continues to be one of the most articulate voices for Library 2.0. " . . . no wonder people like me find Library 2.0, like Web 2.0, complete vaporspeak.

2 comments:

JeanneBR said...

Hear, Hear. :-)

Karen said...

Glad there's at least one other person out there who wants to hear something besides hype!