Ref Tech Rob

Photo: Amanda Mills As our economy continues to change, it's becoming more and more important for libraries to offer resources to help people who are looking for new opportunities. As companies continue to shed jobs, replacing them with automation, it is becoming increasingly necessary for workers to rely on their own efforts. Providing co-working spaces is one way libraries can support people who are taking on roles as contractors, freelancers, and entrepreneurs. So what is co-working? According to David Lee King and Michael Porter in “Create a Library ‘Tech Shop’,” ( American Libraries Magazine , March/April 2012, p. 57) co-working “...brings together independent workers, freelancers, small business owners, and others who need workspace. These folks regularly gather to brainstorm ideas, team up on projects, and work in a more social setting.” It can also be described as “...a recent movement of independent ‘workspaces’ that are created for remote workers, location neutra...

There was an interesting article in the New York Times today about health research and data sharing in the cancer research field ( Cancer Data? Sorry, Can’t Have It - New York Times ). The article discusses the reluctance of many researchers to share valuable data with other researchers. It seems to me that in an age where people collaborate to crack the genetic code, it is irresponsible to withhold data that could be used to help people suffering from cancer. It's this kind of selfish thinking that can contribute to our early extinction.

I was thinking this morning about ways that the library can reach out to the community and really become part of the information infrastructure—partnerships, packaging of local information, education, leveraging our organizational expertise—when, lo and behold, Michael Stephens provided a link in his blog this morning to the text of a speech given by Jon Udell at the Global Research Library summit in October. In his speech, Jon talks about libraries remixing information and essentially becoming contributors and producers of information on the web. Jon also addresses the possibility of librarians lending their expertise to people who are trying to package and organize their own information on the web, and he gives a wonderful example of working with his local police force to organize and mine their local crime statistics—okay, he had to twist their arm a bit to get them to go along with it, but it looks like they were onboard at the end. Anyway, much of what Jon had to say points to th...