The Librarian’s 2.0 manifesto, written in 2006 by Laura Cohen, had pretty much success since then. The world is changing and our approach to librarianship must change as well. I think that the main quality of this Manifesto is to remind this to us, and encourage us to embrace that change. Resistance is futile, and if we stuck to our old habits, we will soon be overwhelmed by new requests from our users that we will not be able to handle. If we cannot fulfill our users’ needs, others will do the job – and who would hire a librarian who only uses outdated techniques ? If we do not do it for others, we will need to do it for ourselves.
So, the world is changing. Great news ! Shall we, then, print copies and the manifesto, learn it by heart and read it loudly every time we need to make a decision ? Of course not. The Manifesto is helpful because Laura Cohen, after thinking about what would be useful for Librarians in the Information Age, tried to give us guidelines. But the map is not the territory, so each one of us will have to finds its very own path.
The title of the Manifesto can be understood as “Librarian in the 2.0 Internet Age”. But I understand it differently. It is also the Manifesto of Librarians 2.0. The world has changed and we have changed, following the evolution of technology. Librarianship has deeply changed. So up-to-date librarians are some kind of librarians 2.0, and we have to be proud of it. It is not easy to embrace change, and we took up the challenge. We accepted that our mission was no longer to provide information, but rather to make it avaible to others, to organize knowledge and educate the users (Information Literacy). We used to be information providers, and now we are also tool crafters and teachers. We are bounded by the evolution of IT, like many others, and we have to consider it as a mutual interest relationship rather than a modern form of slavery.
If you have not read the Librarian’s 2.0 Manifesto yet, I advise you to do so (whether you are a librarian or not). It is a brilliant reflection about what modern librarianship should be. But there is a next step. Since 2006, the world has changed, and the Librarian’s 2.0 Manifesto should evolve as well to fit the ever-changing world of libraries. What do you think about it ? What would you add to the Manifesto ? What would you remove from the text ?
Software, Libraries & Information science 