Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Seth Godin Has Librarians All Fired Up Again

The Twittersphere is buzzing with comments on Seth Godin's latest article: Seth's Blog: The future of the library. (May 16, 2011)


Both Phil Bradley and Librarian By Day weighed in: Seth Godin Misses the Point on Libraries, Again. | Librarian by Day(librarianbyday.net).  Both disagree with some of his simplistic ideas on libraries and librarianship but Phil Bradley gives Godin cudos for realizing that "They need a librarian more than ever (to figure out creative ways to find and use data). " 


The saving grace is that Godin was way more positive than when he dissed librarians in 2010. Godin actually argues that "We need librarians more than we ever did. What we don't need are mere clerks who guard dead paper. Librarians are too important to be a dwindling voice in our culture. For the right librarian, this is the chance of a lifetime." 


Andy (Agnostic, Maybe) writes sarcastically:  Bring Me the Head of Seth Godin!” He argues that Seth Godin "should be waaaaaay down on the list of scalps to attempt to claim right now. Think about it."  PC Sweeney thinks that Seth Godin nailed it in his comments regarding libraries and Buffy Hamilton agrees with her! I do agree with some of Godin's comments but he gets way too simplistic for me when he makes silly statements such as, "Post-Gutenberg, books are finally abundant, hardly scarce, hardly expensive, hardly worth warehousing." Excuse me, but since when have print collections become totally irrelevant? So I tweeted in support of Librarian By Day's thoughtful response as I weighed in ...


  • 4,068 people like Seth's post on Facebook
  • 2124 have retweeted Godin's Blog Post from his blog
  • All this happening in 24 hours
  • Quite interesting that Seth's blog doesn't seem to accept comments.  
  • He lets Facebook and Twitter do the heavy lifting.  
I just love this viral aspect of social media when everyone is willing to share an opinion and is trying to figure things out.  What do you think? 

1 comment:

Linda Straube (Ms. S) said...

I especially like Godin’s comment regarding "fighting for the future, which is librarian as producer, concierge, connector, teacher and impresario."

He also says, "the insight and leverage is going to come from being fast and smart with online resources, not from hiding in the stacks." My question: How do we convince classroom teachers that ability is increasingly important and that librarians can collaborate to provide instruction, tips and tricks which are worth the exposure for their students?

Perhaps we need to talk more about Godin’s view that the library is "all built around one mission: take the world of data, combine it with the people in this community and create value." I actually worked very hard on that today as I met with several Junior Theme classes and worked with students who were trying to find patterns, to add their own voice, and to analyze their research.