Transition

The Bridges article dealing with managing transition brought up what I thought was an interesting point regarding how western culture is so in a state of flux that often it transitions from one thing to another without taking the time to look at or contemplate what it is transitioning from. If libraries and librarians see this as a time of major transition, it would be worth our while to take a good look at where we have been and how we have traditionally defined ourselves. By taking the time and effort to do this, I believe we can identify some important traits and attributes we have been cultivating for years that will further enable us to transition into our new roles in this age of prolific electronic information. If librarians can look at the skills of organization, storage, description, and service honed over the years and learn to mold them to work in this new season, there will be plenty of opportunities for librarians to play a vital role in this culture. Every once in a while I get the feeling that we view the traditional library values and skills as fading away with the hard copy book. While I believe that we need to re-define values and develop new skill sets, I think we have a good foundation to build from – not to throw completely out the door. Going back to the article on being successful in transition, it is important that time is taken to concretely reflect on where we have been and make a good effort to mold where we are going from our foundation. By doing this, we will have a clear vision of who we are and where we want to go.