This is huge! Roy Tennant is joing the staff of OCLC. Roy has inspired me with his writing and speaking for a long time.
Broad, environmental changes are shaking libraries to the core. Sites like Amazon show just how user hostile our library catalogs are. Thousands of books are beginning to appear free on the web from massive digitization projects. These changes are forcing a critical review of where we spend our money and time.
Any way you look at it, these are amazing times for libraries. In our time we have witnessed a revolution in information access not seen since the invention of the printing press. Thanks to the Internet, the answer to many questions that pop into your head are but a mouse click away. With massive digitization projects now in full swing, books long sequestered in dusty stacks are becoming much more discoverable and reaching much larger audiences. As librarians, we are being called upon to reinvent what it is we do and how we add value to this drastically reformulated equation.
I love it. But then, I thrive on change. Since change is life, shouldn’t we all?
Congrats Roy!