Andrew mused yesterday day about eServices librarians. He concluded that:

The question is, are eServices Librarians helping or hindering libraries? In an ideal world all our staff would be involved with eServices and the divide between the physical and digital branches minimal. …Ideally in the future we won’t need a separate role but integrated in all our roles, a digital Jiminy Cricket whispering in our ears.

Orin Zebest. (2005). Joyous Space. Retrieved from https://www.flickr.com/photos/orinrobertjohn/50059475/

This touches quite a chord with me.

Previously I was employed in what was a dream position, that I more or less was allowed to write for myself. Unfortunately I didn’t get to write the rest of the organisation’s positions or allocate the resources just to suit me. ( How unreasonable ! 🙂 )

The intent was to look at new educational technologies, play with them, show them to people, advise about how they could be used, set up pilot projects … and then move on to the next shiny thing, rinse and repeat. You can see the problem there, right? I didn’t for quite a while. In all likelihood there would not be someone to pick up that pilot project once I moved on. My choice would be to say “I don’t care, not my responsibility” or to try to continue cossetting it beyond the pilot stage and into production… which would stop me nimbly leaping to the next investigation.

It also felt like, as Andrew pointed out, having my position meant that responsibility for technology was not evenly distributed in the organisation. Sometimes it felt like everyone else could tick the “keeping abreast of technology” box because my position existed. They may not be personally investigating new technology, but someone on staff was, so they were working for an organisation that valued this – without even having to engage with anything new.. I must stress that this is a caricature, not a description of anyone in particular’s behaviour, but I do understand Andrew’s suspicion that sometimes assigning responsibility for technology may result in less investigation across an organisation rather than more.

Tomorrow… how Andrew’s thoughts resonate in my job currently… (but with far less toast than his follow-up post …. although there may be a teaspoon post coming up later…)