In one of my favorite movies, Kelly’s heroes, Donald Sutherland plays a tank commander who meets all criticism with “Don’t give me those negative vibes man!” and then goes on to do whatever he wanted without worry or second thoughts.
Yesterday I was guilty of negative vibes. I probably should not have vented on the blog, or just written whatever I thought down without publishing it. I’m unsure about whether it was a mistake, but I am open to the possibility.
What did I think would be the consequences of this rant? I’m not really sure. Maybe I needed the release of pent up frustration and maybe, in the back of my mind, I hoped it would be a bugle call to wake people up? Totally mistaken in that case. Most librarians who read the “culture of nice“-blogpost will feel attacked and unfairly critizised, one librarian has already posted a comment to that effect, and the post will probably never be the starting point of a good discussion on the problems and challenges that libraries and librarians face today. So, probably a total waste of bytes and my readers time. Sorry about that, but “it’s my blog and I’ll write what I want to“:-) Please feel free to not read on.
To engender a true culture of innovation and development we have to stop pulling each other down, I did so yesterday, and I will not do so again. I want to focus on the positive things that happens, “positive vibes” if you like, and see how many librarians of all ages embrace and try out new ways of making the library useful to the public and more fun to work with and in.
As development of library services continue we will see project failures, successes and many inbetween, but what I would really hope for was a change in the core culture of libraries/librarians where the lessons from the failures where valued as learning and more important than the successes that we really want to show off. I will start this off with admitting that yesterdays blogpost was a mistake and that I have learnt a valuable lesson on what I want to write about on this blog, and what I should keep to myself or address in a more constructive and calm mood.
Thank you for your attention, hope to see you back here later.
Thomas
Comments