The New Normal: Catalyzing Ideas & People

This is the  text of my closing remarks from Internet Librarian International’s closing panel – our theme was “the new normal meets the new you.”

The new normal: libraries have the potential  be anywhere and everywhere, librarians can actively contribute to transformative social engagement.  Our foundations are built on service and access.

Sharing is key:

  • Freeing data
  • Encouraging participation
  • Sharing Within our own personal learning networks.

Civility & Kindness are key:

  •  Being nice to our users and  each other.
  •  We need to be loud, be vocal and an advocate for what you believe is right – and wrap it with kindness and empathy.

Lawrence Clark Powell wrote:   “A good librarian is not a social scientist, a documentalist, a retrievalist, or an automaton. A good librarian is a librarian: a person with good health and warm heart, trained by study and seasoned by experience to catalyze books and people.”

For the new normal, I’d change that last bit to “catalyze ideas and people.”