I suspect that one thing the choir needs to do is tone it down a little bit: Back off from “all of you gotta learn a and b and c and … aa and bb and cc, RIGHT NOW, ’cause otherwise YOUR LIBRARY’s GONNA DIE!” (That’s exaggerated, but maybe not much.) Guilt won’t do it. Shame won’t do it. Yelling at people won’t do it.

The goal is, or should be, to have a community of awareness within each library and to have (most) librarians and library staff engaged at some level–not necessarily “future of the library” but some level of learning.

How do you get near-universal buy-in? You probably don’t (consider the percentage of so-called professional librarians who don’t belong to any professional organization and don’t read any professional publications, blogs, or websites: I don’t know the number, but I’d bet it’s close to 50%).

Improving the percentage (or lowering the negative percentage)? No easy answer, no single answer. Worth thought.

So – many libraries seem to have “those people” – staff that have stopped learning. Oh, maybe they’re still learning about their favorite hobby or something … but when it comes to “future of the library” type stuff, they seem to have stopped (my experience, anyway).

I’d love to see some of us “choir” types you’re preaching to tackle that problem! We know they’re out there – but what can be done about them? How do you, at the least, lead the proverbial horse to the water?

I think the profession would move forward quite a bit if a majority of libraries could adequately tackle this.

Hmm… sounds like a blog post…