In the Land of the Blind...

My Director said this to me on my way to teach a class last week - "In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed is their king." I thought that was quite amusing and said a great deal. I can see how it can apply to any number of situations.

Recently, a colleague of mine in a distant university flew into a rage when her "superiors" came to her with "concerns" regarding her Facebook group and how it was being used to communicate with her student workers. I am paraphrasing, but she said something to the affect that the other supervisors felt as if they were being forced to join her Facebook group. The details are to complicated to fully describe here, but the gist of her rage rests on the reactionary position of her library administrators.

As was described to her, there had not been a complete buy-in regarding using Facebook for library projects. Apparently, as she would no doubt agree, she is forced to live in the Land of the Blind where there is an attempt to blind those with visions of novel approaches to services! The One-Eyed indeed!

If we as librarians are supposed to represent the One-Eyed in a land of the Information Blind, what does it say when the administrators of our libraries seek to put those eyes out? Are we to take steps backwards? This has been the failing of the field for years! We lag behind in technology, and when the few us that see the light reach for it, we are pulled down and chastised! Is it quite depressing on many levels.

It must be noted, in the spirit of fairness, that on the following day, she was allowed to reactive her Facebook group. However, it should not have been stopped in the first place simply because some librarians seek to live in the Land of the Blind.