I don’t think there’s a single entry on my “not list” that I disdain as being a bad thing or even not a good thing (even if I regard Second Life as absurdly overhyped as a useful place for libraries to be, I’m not nearly so skeptical about gaming in general)… they’re just not things that currently work for me.

Podcasts probably the extreme example. I really wanted to listen to Uncontrolled Vocabulary, but couldn’t find a situation where it made sense–where I could “sit still” or find something sufficiently non-involving for long enough to listen through an episode…and with my voice, heck, I should be doing podcasts–but I can’t see creating something I don’t consume.

After proving to him that I am quite capable of doing all of the above, I also demonstrated that I choose to pay someone else to do all of that for me. This is neither good nor bad — just one of many choices that I make in life. Similarly, I am capable of driving a stick shift, but choose to use an automatic (and my current car — the only really nice one I have ever owned — gives me the choice of both). I also choose to pay someone to clean my house and to do my yard work. This does not make me a slob or anti-environmental, it is just a choice. The only thing that it does say about me is that my level of decadence has increased along with my income.

Choosing to integrate — or not — any technology is neither good nor bad — it’s just a choice. Bringing these things into our personal lives is up to each one of us and should not be looked up or down upon by others. Integrating technology into our professional lives depends on the environment and people with which we work. If in a library or other institution that serves a public, it also depends on the level of skills among our community. Rarely is there a one-size-fits-all answer, despite how often we seem to be told about them.

That leaves at least three weeks for this discussion (here and elsewhere) to continue…so far, I’m impressed.

I like that Walt is putting my not-meme up against the tech competencies that many of us are seeing, and I love his suggestion that maybe we all don’t have to do/be it all. I think maybe that’s where I was coming from when I posted mine, although I couldn’t have articulated it as such then. I haven’t seen ANY of those competency lists that I could score 100% on. There should be some basic competenices that we could all agree on–and that no one should be applying for a job without them. But do I really need to know how to embed a video or set up a simple network?

There’s also a pretty big difference between expectations at different types of libraries. My hunch is that academic libraries don’t get students coming in with their cell phones, asking how to upload a photo to MySpace, but many of us at pub lib reference desk get that sort of question daily. But, is that our job? Am I $30K in debt to be a very clever, over-educated tech support person? Like the Maytag repair man, I get all kinds of excited when a juicy ref question comes across the desk. I’ve been mulling all this over, especially in light of John Berry’s bizarre editorial and last week’s news about librarians being demoted to customer service librarians in Wausau, WI. I think that librarians used to have a very clear idea of what their institutions’ missions were, and what was expected of them as professionals. None of that is very clear at all right now, and our current staffing models, skill sets and physical spaces highlight this murkiness.

Just wanted to throw my considerations out there. And, no, no one is making feel like I need to ‘fess up. Sometimes telling the truth is a beautiful thing, and sometimes just keeping one’s mouth shut is the beautiful thing, or at least wise thing, in each case.

I’m in the Father William category at this point. Still, I didn’t participate initially. The heart of my post is really about the secondary discussions–the distinctions that are being made, and what “techNos” may say about “need to know” lists. I think that’s more interesting than whether Librarian X has a flat-screen TV or Librarian Y knows PHP backward and forward.

I certainly would not encourage a new librarian to confess a set of lacking skills, particularly since you’re supposed to be (and most librarians are) experts at finding out things they don’t already know. For that matter, I’m not encouraging anybody to ‘fess up. Heck, there have been times when I felt I was “faking it” with a programming-related skill…only to find out later that I was in better shape than most others.

Maybe I will do an essay on those lists of “tech skills we all need to know.”

A couple days ago I did think about participating for all of about 30 seconds. Today at lunch I finally figured out either what was bugging me or, at the very least, a good reason for me and folks like me–students, those on the job market, early in their career–not to participate. Now I have not done a tally of who has participated but I think it’s tending to a couple (or more!) years in the profession, in a solid job at the moment, reasonably “big names.”

Sure, I have some Tech-Nots and I could easily and readily drop a couple of them. But being on the job market at the start of my career with a blog already mouthy enough it does not begin to seem to be in my best interest to participate.

What if what I list is one of those things that some library I want to work at thinks is critical? Is my ability to overcome that which I do not or would rather not do applicable? Or am I unqualified just because I currently say it is a Tech-Not for me?

Despite the fact that I don’t particularly like learning new software I have done it over and over again, and have even given professional presentations on some of it so others wouldn’t have to learn it the hard way as I was forced to. But I’m not about to make the claim in this discussion in the first place. That was a completely hypothetical example. Nudge nudge wink wink.

So while this is an interesting discussion I think it [fully unintentionally] excludes many voices. I think this is the kind of discussion many LIS students need to be having with each other. Let each other know it’s OK not to know everything on all those lists that proliferate about all the tech skills [despite others skills] we all need to know. Just be willing to learn what you need when you need it. But it seems to me that having it in a “permanent” public forum and from this angle may not be the wisest course for many of us.

I do not mean to judge anyone participating and I know Rochelle certainly had no intention to exclude but I just want to throw this angle out there as a consideration. At least it explains why I have not participated.