[Note: the post below started out as a comment on Library Juice, but I decided to move it over here as it got a bit too long and wide-ranging for a comment. Besides, I have been doing a lot more commenting than blogging lately (to the point of being a virtual squatter in one thread at Walt at Random) and wanted to get back in the swing.]

Rory Litwin posted a thought-provoking entry to Library Juice earlier this week entitled Questioning the Techie Mission. I’ll trust that you can read his post yourself, and won’t run it down point-by-point, but his main argument is that there is an over-emphasis on technology in library blogs, and–due to a host of often unstated assumptions behind most library blogs involving technology–many library bloggers tend not to be very objective when it comes to technology.

I agree that there is sometimes too much emphasis on technology in library blogging, but also agree with Nicole Engard’s comment that blogging librarians tend to be more tech-y or we wouldn’t be blogging. Blogging is getting more and more mainstream, but it seems to still be true that the people who are going to see the value in setting up and maintaining a blog are people who are, if not hardcore techies, then serious “netizens” who already read lots of blogs and see a value in online communities and the tools that make them possible.

I do value those blogs that don’t take technology as a primary focus, and I think there is a real opportunity for people who want to take a non-techie subject and run with it, the way that Jill Stover has done with Library Marketing-Thinking Outside the Book or John Overholt has with his Hyde Collection Catablog. If someone has a great blog about instruction or signage or something, I’d love to hear about it (actually, a signage wiki or Flickr group could be fantastic…)

Many library bloggers, myself included, aren’t full-time systems librarians, but “blended librarians” or “tech-librarians-by-default.” For my part, as a younger librarian (at 35 I’m not that young, but I have been the youngest librarian at both of the schools where I have worked), I didn’t come into the profession wanting to be a techie (and to real techies, I’m a techie wannbe), but it seems like that is where the opportunities are for newer librarians to lead and distinguish ourselves. It doesn’t mean that reference or instruction or other roles aren’t important to me; it means that when I arrived at a new job and looked around at how I could make an impact, technology was an obvious answer.

I haven’t really felt that “they [meaning my colleagues] just don’t get it”; instead that “they” welcomed someone who wanted to do some trend-spotting or to keep abreast on developments in web design and technology.

I think one of the problems of filling that role is not only that it can be easy to slip into technophilia, but that it can be easy to “oversell” new technology or technology trends. Are blogs and wikis and Flickr and MySpace and del.icio.us interesting trends? I’d say yes. Should libraries have someone on staff willing to explore those kinds of services and sites and report back to the rest of the library on their potential? Again, I’d say yes, though I recognize that smaller libraries may not have the luxury of staff time to devote to that kind of exploration.

But do I think that blogs and wikis and social software in and of themselves are the most important thing about libraries? No way. I’m with Steven Cohen that it is more important to be a good searcher than it is to post photos to Flickr, and I am sympathetic to Rory’s observation that:

The focus on the promotion of technology as an end in itself can distract techie librarians’ attention away from the educational mission of libraries, so that as they learn more about technical tools, they learn less about the subtleties of interpreting and responding to user needs, and less about the bibliographic (electronic resources included) knowledge of subjects that’s needed to be a good reference librarian.

Perhaps that is right. Yet I have two observations: (1) this need not be an either/or proposition; promoting technology “can distract techie librarians’ attention away from the educational mission of libraries” but it need not. And (2) most libraries have more than one person on staff. As long as those of us who are interested in all this techie stuff can avoid the “Us vs. Them” attitude Rory mentions, we can be an important part of a library staff. We can learn about those subtleties of reference and instruction and collection development from librarians who have been doing it successfully for years, and they can learn from us about new ways of reaching out to users or making collections more accessible through technology.