Caveat Lector

Something the Michigander said about feeling mildly superannuated hit me in a soft spot.

Nah, nah, it’s not the age thing. The wide age range among students (at 31, I am right smack dab in the middle) is one of the things I purely love about library school. Though, okay, okay, I admit that some of the Wet-Behind-the-Ears set turn my superannuated teeth on edge now and then. I hope I wasn’t quite that bad when I was 23, though I suspect I was in fact worse.

No, it’s the Technology Thing. I am a great howling geek as proto-librarians go, and it shows. Perhaps too much.

My reference professor was pointed out to us during orientation as a technophobe. I don’t think she is, really; like most people, she’s all over stuff that actually works. That classroom has a digital-camera setup that lets regular paper be projected like a transparency. Quite a sensible idea. She loves it.

She just gets that deer-in-the-headlights look whenever I threaten to go off on a techno-tangent. Am I going to say something she won’t understand? Am I going to turn into a sudden techno-messiah? Am I about to proclaim the technology-induced Library Apocalypse, as too many techno-messiahs and frightened librarians have?

Well, I’m not. David can tell you that I’ve spent much of the last few weeks seething about the (unnecessary) shortcomings of current-gen library technology. (Proprietary database vendors have a hell of a lot to answer for, in my not-terribly-humble opinion.) I’m wholly on the side of the angels librarians in many of their concerns about databases and ebooks and electronic text generally. And techno-messiahs irritate the living daylights out of me. But she doesn’t know that, poor woman, and I never get a chance to explain it because she shuts down so fast.

I don’t precisely feel unwelcome, in part because this woman makes a serious point of being open and welcoming. But I sure do think twice before I say the word “ebook” in that classroom.

A few of my schoolmates look at me with respect laced with envy. Because I know how to put together a basic Web page, for Pete’s sake! They seem to think that I’ll snap up their jobs before they get to them, when the truth is I’m after jobs they’d never want. (Can you see me in a school library? Shee-yeah. As if.)

One asked me yesterday during break in reference class how I learned what I know. “Being dropped in the deep end,” I told him honestly. There’s this weird sense that technogeekery is a higher calling, a priesthood. Nah. It’s what ordinary people do to keep from throwing very expensive pieces of equipment out top-story windows.

There’s also a sense that we technogeeks think what we do is a higher calling. And I suspect that’s substantially our fault, and it irritates me because it makes techno-evangelism (when it’s warranted) just that much harder. But—and here I will whinge a little—for all their techno-envy, these people will not stir a step to learn from me and people like me. I’m about to cancel my CSS workshops, because nobody is coming.

I don’t wear a geek-clerical collar or techno-tefillin. I do still strongly believe that nothing I do is beyond the grasp of an ordinarily intelligent person. I would, just once, like to be met halfway. Even one-quarter-way.

I’m still trying. Spurred by me, our LITA group is considering a Markover Day in the SLIS lab, where people can come in and work on their websites (new or existing) together. I hope that refurbishing existing projects in a congenial atmosphere will prove a better lure than an hour of passively listening to me. (Hey, I’d take that deal. Even I don’t like listening to me for an hour.)

But, sheesh. Does it have to be this hard?