Why A Blog?

That’s easy enough. From King Henry V: “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; or close the wall up with our English dead.”

Those of you who have access to Library Literature and Information Science can easily find what I wrote from the mid 80s to the mid 90s. Aside from an RQ article on building a local business directory database, the items are on “library theory” rather than “library practice.”

No one seemed to care about “theory” … not even enough to take issue with what I had to say. That wasn’t entirely a surprise. The “overly practical” nature of library literature has been an issue for many years. I can vouch for the past 40 years and I know that the library educator Louis Shores had bemoaned the 40 before that. There was a kerfuffle over this just a few days ago on the PubLib list, or so I interpreted it, with one writer bemoaning a perceived lack of depth and others defending it.

Anyway, I abandoned the library literature when I found the web, starting my first (highly practical) “Library of Tomorrow” discussion on ElectricMinds in 1996. I wanted to talk to knowledgeable library users rather than to librarians or administrators, working from the supposition that users and the technologies they choose to use would be pushing the public library agenda more than anything else.

I learned much more than I taught. I’ve learned from web theorists, social theorists, technologists, knowledge management gurus, and many, many more.

I’ve also learned much that dovetails into and refines my earlier theoretical concerns. 15 and more years have passed. It is time to write again.