Thing 18

Well, I was a bit ahead of schedule before but now it has been weeks since I have looked at '23 things'. Completion date is drawing closer so now its time to get a wriggle on and finish. After looking at Encore, Ebscohost 2.0 etc it is all very interesting, how successful has the rollout of Encore been with the limitations that have been set? How successful would it be if we did allow students to utilise all of the functions that should be available? The only way we will know is if we do it! I think there is a lot of hype surrounding these new technologies and usercentred change but we have one foot in the old 'library controlled' camp and the other in the 'usercentred' camp. Maybe it is time to fully commit to 'usercentred' and put that other foot there. Of course, with all of these new technologies and applications and talk of usercentred change there is an assumption that ALL of our patrons know what this is all about. Working in a library is a career change for me and I'm at the bottom of the heap hierarchically speaking. This means that I am however in the fortunate position of being in the front line with patrons. There are many patrons wandering around without a clue how to actually access the resources that we have available and this includes the 'digital native' generation. Usercentred change MUST focus on user education otherwise we can rollout as much as we like but we will encounter reluctance from patrons unwilling to wade through new technologies and applications on their own.