Technology

I'm going to date myself and tell everyone that for my internship in graduate school, I worked at a small library in Ypsilanti, MI that did not have an online catalog, and still used the paper version of the Reader's Guide. I had a teacher just last week tell me that she missed the card catalog. I DO NOT! Some of the first online catalogs I used were cumbersome and difficult, but to me they still far outweighed the card catalog. When I first started my job in GA in 1996, we had an online catalog without the circulation module! We had to file cards. I'll never forget watching our pages sit in front of rows of cards for hours filing and pulling cards for books. Let's not even talk about pulling holds and keeping up with new books! At times, technology seems to be viewed as something that will consume libraries. I see that technology has greatly enhanced our abilities to serve. I was so excited when we got our first direct connection to the Internet. I was in Marquette, MI in my first professional job, and the Internet was just amazing to me. We would type in an address and then wait, and wait, and wait, sometimes for 5 minutes, but the results were worth it (sometimes).

Lately, it seems to me that many of the new technologies are used for social purposes. I find that I am interested in technologies that help me during my work day, but I am not really very interested in going to the computer for my social outlets. Shopping however...