Remember that New York Times article “A Hipper Crowd of Shushers” that came out just over a year ago?  It’s been on my mind lately, and I’m not sure why.  Anyway, I finally realized why I don’t like the article and why I still walk away from it with a sense of discomfort.

I think many of our institutions (and maybe even we ourselves) are becoming cold, lifeless, and untouchable.  With the sweeping rise of blogs and wikis and with even more specific technologies like RFID and SMS, libraries are becoming too reliant on automation and digitization to provide library service.  And to put it mildly, we’re losing some of the human touch that makes library service so important and so exciting (and which was the reason I got into this profession in the first place).

I’m not discounting the value of technology in and of itself.  On the contrary, I think technology is great if it’s used in the right contexts and for the right reasons.  Digital and distance technologies can bridge gaps of geography, but these technologies are most (or only) effective when those gaps actually exist.  (For example, I could not be working toward my master’s without distance education, since there were no MLS programs in Georgia when I started applying for grad school.)  In effect, if we rely too much on digital services, we will assume that gaps exist where they don’t and risk widening the ideological, technical, and economic gaps that already do exist.

Which brings me back to the New York Times article.  “Hip” should be the least of our concerns, as long as some of us treat our customers and our coworkers (and sometimes, again, ourselves) as less than human.  Rethinking librarianship means rethinking the higher purposes of our profession and how we should therefore interpret our brand of customer service.  While this sometimes means establishing IM reference or an online book club, it also means training staff to be friendly and professional, and our buildings should be inviting and welcoming as well.  And even if Web 2.0 technologies do invite and foster user participation, a human element is still required to give true value to that participation.

We can even take this humanizing process a step further.  As professionals whose ultimate goal is community-building, we are in a unique position to remarket and rebrand ourselves, even as individuals.  We have families, we get tattoos, we’re wine connoisseurs.  Do these things make us hip?  Not necessarily; I don’t think that having a kid or getting inked or liking wine are automatic tickets to cool.  But these things do make us human, both in appearance and in actuality, and that’s something that we should let our public glimpse and appreciate every now and then.  In the same way that we make information easily accessible, we must work just as hard to make ourselves easily accessible.

If Library 2.0 is about creating user-centered environments and services, then Library 3.0 will be about building, fostering, and cherishing the connections that these trends enable.  Our libraries must become places where technology and humanity mesh, where our higher purpose is to connect our users with information and with each other.