The fabu librarian 2.0

I
don’t hear my colleagues talk much about librarian competencies, even
though we’re surrounded by clinicians for whom competency is a serious
career issue. Let alone the so-called Library 2.0 competencies, which
some people I know view as a derisory notion. In the health library biz
we are acutely aware of the preponderance of technology in our work,
and we hustle as diligently as David Beckham with his personal trainer
to keep up with the unceasing digital whirr.Most
of us, that is. We all know fellow workers who fit the adage “To err is
human, but to really foul things up requires a computer.” We anxiously
observe them jabbing about with the mouse as they struggle with
elementary software routines, stretching a bikini’s worth of skill over
their variously sized talents. Experiencing an in-service with a few of
these types (or worse, asking for their help at the Reference Desk) is
like a long wait for a delayed flight in Purgatory’s airport lounge.”Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.”Once
upon a time we breathed in the smell of beeswax and parchment in drafty
scriptoria, and measured our competencies in terms of the cut of our
quill pens and the quality of our uncials. Today we inhale digital
oxygen and cut code. Library 2.0, as the borrowing from software
marketing implies, represents a natural development from what went
before. It is not just a smattering of adventitious embellishments. I
know this in my html’d heart, but I don’t yet see it given the
significance it has for me in the elegantly worded charters, protocols,
standards and guidelines of my profession.Interested in
measuring my own knowledge and performance against some standard (if I
were younger this might be called ambition), I want to record in this
post my web wanderings and stretch out a more generous swatch of
spandex from the fabric of information I discovered. I’ll start by defining terms. …