But a recent post by Walt Crawford has got me thinking though (as usual), and that deserves more than a Tweet.  Entitled “We and Me“, he questions the mythology around new technology when people make statements such as

“We (all) are (or soon will be) connected to the internet all the time.” “We (all) are growing to prefer reading online rather than in print.” “We (all) use iPhones.”

And in comment which echoes everything I have been thinking about our profession for the last year, Walt writes:

The breakthrough recognition: It’s not false universalism. It’s elitism. “We” really means “the people who matter.”

Doesn’t make it any more right. Does make it a lot more understandable. Without that recognition, I’d have to believe that some We-ists are hard of hearing, hard of understanding or a bit daft: Surely they’re aware that their universal assertions are nowhere near being universal?

I think it is time we all took a step back and really thought about the universals that do apply to our work as librarians.  That everyone seeks knowledge, not just information.  All people desire to know, says Aristotle. And to know is more than to just be informed.  In terms of information theory, Fox News gives me “information”, but I don’t know if I then know more about the world except for the fact that Fox News is good for a laugh.

The related universal is education.  Everyone has a right to education, from birth until death. The education gap is different then an information gap.  Identifying an information need and then seeking it is very different then identifying an education need and filling it.

And lastly people need recreation.  All of these are coming from my enthusiastic reading of Bill Crowley’s Renewing Professional Librarianship.

The danger that Walt identifies, and I agree with, is that when blinded by one kind of universal–the myth of universal connectedness–we are missing the other universals.  That not everyone can even use a web browser, let alone Facebook, Twitter, and the like.  That not everyone has a cell phone, or if they do they can do anything beyond make calls.  The one benefit of my job is that I interact with users of all ages and skill levels.  Some people use the social features of the software I’ve implemented very well.  And yet the women down the hall from me can’t find the “Internet” because all she does is make icons for the few sites she uses, and clicks them from her desktop.

I don’t see this changing any time soon.  Even in the net generation.  My younger brother and sister, while both technologically savvy, are not these mythical users that people make them out to be.  My brother really dislikes social software.  And while my sister takes to it, I don’t see her doing library research from her cell phone.

The Internet is important, and is changing things.  But it doesn’t change the fundamentals, and I think sometimes that we are losing focus on what we are delivering when we look to much on how we are delivering it.