Thursday, November 06, 2008

Shark, Jumping the

Librarians should be wary of jumping the shark when it comes to their use of technology. During its election night coverage, CNN introduced "hologram" interviews. And now, dear reader, sit back and wait for the first hologram reference librarian, hologram library instruction session, and vendor-sponsored holograminar... coming soon to a library near you.

Ask the readers: Have libraries already jumped the (technological) shark? If so, when? And how?

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yes, Gaming in libraries and insisting Second Life is meaningful.

Anonymous said...

Anything involving twitter in education. I'm still open to suggestions on this one, but I have to admit, I don't see any use for it.

Anonymous said...

First they would have to actually make real holograms... CNN fudged this. If they were real holograms the commentators would have been able to see them as well as the TV audience.

Matthew Hunt said...

If you're jumping the shark so often that you're weary, maybe you should stop jumping and take a nap.

J said...

... corrected. thanks for slaying my typo, coneslayer.

Anonymous said...

She isn't a hologram, but "Ms. Dewey" is a sort of automated avatar reference librarian. Sort of. Does anybody still visit her web site?

Anonymous said...

I'd be quite pleased if some of my patrons were "beamed in" as holograms - allows librarian to:
*ignore patron by pretending the holodeck is on the fritz again
*help a smelly patron without experiencing visceral disgust
*pretend to rip dripping, still-beating heart from patron's chest

Lisa said...

Libraries jumped the shark when we stopped chaining the books.

Anonymous said...

"*help a smelly patron without experiencing visceral disgust"

Oh, please, bring on the holograms and shark jumping if it means I can breathe again.

The DLC said...

Second. Life.

Anonymous said...

2.0--need I say more?

Monster Librarian said...

I love the Happy Days episode where the Fonz tries to jump the shark.

Anonymous said...

i want to "amen" second life...i work in a prison library; no happy islands here :)

Olivia said...

very nice infromation... =)
you'v seem very expert to this topic.
keep posting ok!

thanks :-)
Family Is Everything

The Comma Hander-Outer Lady said...

Our library is so half-assed about its technology that our holograms would turn out one-dimensional.

Also, I will not add Blu-Ray DVDs to the collection until after patrons stop asking me whether or not they can play DVD players in their car CD system and just listen to the audio.

the.effing.librarian said...

librians jumped the shark when we made "see also" cards.. we should never have tried to suggest that any subject is equal to another.
"see" cards are even better because they say "fail" right to your face. in fact, organizing information so others could find it was a mistake from the start.