Revisiting the Olden Days
By Karen G. Schneider
American Libraries Columnist
Director of technology for the Shenendehowa Public Library in Clifton Park, New York.
kgs@bluehighways.com
Column for February 2001
Last June I passed the five-year mark for writing the Internet Librarian column. Given the centuries in Internet time since the column first debuted—for example, Netscape was only seven months old, and Internet Explorer but a gleam in Uncle Bill’s eye—it seemed time to revisit some of my earlier columns and do a “hit parade” of the best, the worst, and the OBT (Overcome By Technology).
Worst definition
In my first column (June 1995), I tried hard to explain the Web—a reasonable goal, considering that more than half of all libraries were still not connected. What is tiramisu to someone without taste buds? I managed to be equally confusing and dull by describing the Web itself as “a multimedia, multiprotocol hypertext Internet database.” It would have been no less clearer had I said “gopher with pictures,” or as I put it in May 1998, a “tumultuous, disorganized trash barge of human information.”
My big mouth
In September 1995, I first wrote about filtering in a column that referred to the term “pornography” or a variant no less than seven times. Four years later, in a deposition for the Loudoun County, Virginia, filtering lawsuit, I squirmed for a couple of hours while a lawyer grilled me about the meaning of the term “pornography.” I know better now. I’m a librarian: I can’t do your taxes, I don’t know if you need a divorce, and I will never again describe any content as “pornographic”!
Best predictions
Writing about Java in February 1996, I commented with naïve prescience that “the lesson of Mosaic and Netscape is that some tools get to be trailblazers and others get to make money.” Netscape was the 800-pound gorilla back then—until it was pounded into the dirt by a Johnny-come-lately called Internet Explorer. A year and a half later, my first look at the E-Rate led to the observation, “the rules seem to change daily or are complex beyond belief.” When is the government going to issue a Palm version of the eligibility list—or, God forbid, the new filtering guidelines—so I can keep up with it minute-by-minute?
Worst predictions
Things that haven’t quite caught on the way I thought they would include community networks, Z39.50, and cataloging the Internet. Nothing crashed and burned, and these ideas are in use, not dead; but overall these are excellent concepts with more baggage than airlift.
Great people
The best articles were those filled with the words of the people I interviewed, and in this genre, the June/July 1997 column profiling Marvin Scilken was a pleasure to research. Marvin was the longtime editor of the homespun library rag, The Unabashed Librarian; I billed him as the last surviving non-connected librarian. With that excuse, Marvin and I spent hours having “chin wags” about librarianship, life, the Internet, Brooklyn—you name it. Marvin said many times that if his library didn’t have a bestseller he would run to a local bookstore and buy it. I wish all those librarians dithering about providing e-mail or Web radio would take a page from the Book of Marvin.
Funniest reader input
Librarian humor rocks—and in June 1998, readers sent me an entire rock garden of extra-funny “daffynitions” for Internet terms. Perhaps the best: “Extranet—the Internet we use when the first one gets too busy.” (This article also featured “Acronym Soup,” a song written by Thomas Dowling of OhioLink to the tune of “Three Little Maids from School”; it began, “Three-letter acronyms can be/Very confusing as you’ll see.”)
Most salacious input
Part of the joy of being a writer is the sheer carefree irresponsibility of knowing that editors will rescue me from bad spelling, poor judgment, and naughty comments. So I broke the lasciviousness barrier by accident (and received many amused responses) when the January 2000 column concluded with a double-entendre I never, ever thought my editor would actually run—“E-Service with a Smile from Those Nice Ladies with the Tight Buns.”
Favorite Web links
I was startled to discover how many Web sites from Ye Olden Dayes were still alive and kicking—including many from the earliest columns (even if the resources have moved). Need basic information about “Mobile Libraries” (the Australian term for bookmobiles)? See Mobile Library Services. Few medical resources can best Diseases, Disorders and Related Topics. The Librarian’s Index to the Internet is better than ever and still commercial-free (take that, Yahoo!), and Stephanie Stokes continues to provide oodles of excellent clip art for library graphics and Web sites—see Library Media and PR for a plethora of resources related to ALA’s @ Your Library campaign.
One last backward glance
John Kupersmith, now at the California Digital Library, wrote in late 1999, “In the midst of all this change . . . people still come into libraries and find things there that expand their lives. Children still discover books and experience storytelling. Librarians still help them learn and grow.”
When I finished reviewing over five years of writing this column, I was left, in the end, with just one question: Is there anything better than what we librarians do?
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