I’m extremely pleased to report that I have been offered, and accepted, the Library Innovation and Technology Manager position at the Boulder Public Library. I’ve been kind of quiet for the last month or two because I’ve been preparing for, presenting/interviewing for, and just generally concentrating on this.

The new director at BPL and I share an ambitious vision of what libraries can and should be and are very excited to begin working together toward those goals. I’ll be working with the local Boulder technology scene to create a learning laboratory supporting the creative expression of the staff and community.

We will also be implementing programs to address the digital divide, which I see as more a compelling problem than ever as our job market is not only tightening, but requiring a greater range of technical skills. There are still so many without easy access to computers or the training needed to use even the most common software packages on the job.

An interesting thing about this opportunity is that it really highlights the leadership-management differences we discussed in the recent CAL Leadership Institute. During the interview I asked for clarification on this point and it was stressed that this was *leadership* position in which they were looking for vision, much more so than a management position in which I was to maintain the status quo. That is the most exciting thing about the job!

Here’s to an exciting new year!  I’ll be writing more about what’s coming later….

So, I’ll admit it… I was trying to be the last person to post about Internet Librarian 2008. I’ve been holding out. But finally, I can’t stop myself…. must…. blog…. about IL.

Internet Librarian was like coming home. Everyone was as techie (or more) than me. We all had our gadgets, our online presence, our favorite things to share and play with. It was great!

In contrast, all too often in libraries I’ve found there is little emphasis on, or appreciation of, technology– and while I am the first to admit that technology must have a purpose, it must make life easier, to be hostile to technology in a library today means that you are distancing yourself from our users in a way that could quite possibly threaten the existence of libraries in the future.

But I am more optimistic than that. I believe that libraries will adapt, grow, change, and empower our users to learn about and make use of information technologies in all their forms. That will (hopefully) always include books, but it will also include art, games, story-time, community gatherings, video workshops, podcasting, and….. well, we’ll see about that. =)

After Internet Librarian, it was quite a shock  two weeks later to attend the Colorado Association of Libraries conference. While IL had blogger’s table at the front and back of every room, and it seemed like everyone was carrying a mobile device of some kind (see the photo below), I saw none of this at CAL.

Thanks to Laura Crossett for the photo (http://www.flickr.com/photos/newrambler/)

I find this odd. Colorado is one of the leaders in technology adoption. In a recent opinion poll done by The USA Today/Claritas it was found that 4 out of the 25 top counties for “early adopters” are found in the front-range of Colorado. The Boulder County area is known as the “Silicon Flatirons” because of the number of tech companies located here. I don’t have to tell any library folks the importance of understanding, and reflecting, one’s community. All of us– public, academic, special, understand this as crucial to our mission.

So I have to ask…. what happened? Colorado was once a leader in library technology.

Well, it’s not all that bad…. There is a lot of support in the area for change and development in our libraries. One of our outstanding library technology leaders is Sue Staples of the High Plains Library District who has done a fantastic job of transforming her library’s online presence and encouraging technological exploration and innovation with the Colorado library community.

Steve Lawson of Colorado College and Joe Kraus of DU have gotten together a Web 2.0 & Libraries Round Table under the auspices of the Alliance.

The Colorado State Library has done a little work at exploring whether the development of an Open Source ILS project similiar the Georgia’s Pines program is viable. This was one of the projects I highlighted as part of my poster presentation at CAL 2007 on “Open Source and Libraries”.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention the efforts of one of my fellow CAL Leadership Institute members, Victoria Petersen, who is doing some really cool stuff not only in leading CAL’s Second Life Interest Group but just generally being fabulous down in Mancos.

And of course, he hardly needs mentioning, but who can possibly not be impressed with a library director like Jamie LaRue who not only is willing run Linux on his own machine, but was willing to try adopting open source software on his library system’s public workstations as well. Jamie is definitely an example of someone who is pitching in and lighting fires in Colorado’s library community.

These are only a few examples of the great work being done in Colorado currently (and many apologies to the MANY I left out), but I hope we see more.

So, Colorado peeps…… who else is doing the cool stuff? And where do we go from here?

THAT will be the subject of a post soon. HINT: If we have all this tech knowledge and enthusiasm around– why don’t we use it?