Librarian 2.0 on the Cluetrain

http://library2.0.alablog.org/blog/_archives/2006/5/9/1944906.html

I just posted this at the ALA L2 Blog:

As we close our week of discussion about Librarian 2.0, let me ask you to ponder this:

Cluetrain Manifesto Theses 53, 54, 55

There are two conversations going on. One inside the company. One with the market.

In most cases, neither conversation is going very well. Almost invariably, the cause of failure can be traced to obsolete notions of command and control.

As policy, these notions are poisonous. As tools, they are broken. Command and control are met with hostility by intranetworked knowledge workers and generate distrust in internetworked markets.

I think we carry some obsolete notions of command and control in our organizations and that sometimes throws up a roadblock for folks to move forward and create change. Distrust is hard to overcome and I’ve seen it create a toxic atmosphere in libraries. Maybe Librarian 2.0 can use technology, but more importantly, builds trust: through mechanisms like a wiki or blog, via effective meetings and project planning, by overcoming technolust and by simply being human: not the boss, not the commander in chief, not the supervisor no one wants to work with because they are so hung up on control. They are human.