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As some of you may know, escaping the echo chamber has been a concern of librarians for a while now. American library bloggers, and more recently UK library bloggers, share their experiences and discuss innovative ideas for developing their libraries, whether they are public, academic, law, health or special libraries. For approximately four or five years now, I've been reading about all these fantastic developments and joining in conversations with other library and information workers in the profession.There's some great stuff happening and some even greater stuff being developed for the future.
And yet, we find ourselves in the unfortunate position whereby libraries are facing
closure threats,
funding is being cut drastically, and
staff are facing redundancy. Obviously, these new stories are due to the economic climate, but why are libraries suffering worse than some other areas? Is it because libraries aren't seen as important as some of the more vital areas of public spending such a healthcare and education? Possibly. Is the problem exacerbated by the lack of communication outside of anyone working in the profession or our regular users? I think so.
