Freshly back from the annual meeting of NAHSL, frantically meeting deadlines before trekking off to APHA this weekend, I wanted to at least share a little bit from the former on my blog this week. It was a terrific meeting, complete with thoughtful, thought-provoking, and engaging speakers, wonderful food and entertainment with friends and colleagues, and the not-to-be-outdone location of Falmouth, MA, right on the water. One great benefit of our region is we’ll never run out of lovely spots to hold our meetings!
As has become my practice, I did some sketchnoting during the conference. Since I wrote an earlier post mentioning his book, I thought I’d share my notes from David Weinberger’s Plenary Talk here. Entitled, “Library as Platform?” it took much of the content of “Too Big to Know” and put it into the context of the role of libraries (and librarians) at this time. “Too Big” was one of my favorite books from last year. I really enjoyed getting to hear the author share the thoughts and ideas in person, and as you can see by my notes, it left me with several of my own:
A Librarian by Any Other Name 
Hi Sally,
I always enjoy your sketchbooking. I’ve tried it myself, and found it’s not as easy as you make it appear!
Two comments: The populist viewpoint gets a lot of press today but I still have some reservations (call me elitist!)
1. I don’t think the crowd is always correct (consider sheep – or lemmings;)
2. If there’s an expert in the ‘room’ and no one notices, is she having any effect?
This is not to say the experts always get things right, or that crowd-sourcing can’t generate valid and useful information. I just think there is still a need for curation in some form. If individuals don’t take on that role, the Web will, and I’m not completely comfortable with that.
Thanks, Jenny. I’m also not always very comfortable with the populist viewpoint. That said, I found Weinberger’s book really fascinating on many levels. It gets you thinking, that’s for sure. Highly recommended.