A passive aggressive fb reply

Personally, I think this has been a wonderful philosophical exchange in the style of Plato’s Dialogues. I’m glad that we could all make it here today and I’d like to thank everyone for their participation, and for the most part, keeping things civil. Frankly I’m surprised we didn’t arrive at Godwin’s Law – given how sensitive we are to all the issues put forward in our discussion. What we have achieved, I believe, is a conversation stripped of esoteric language and laid out in a way such that we, librarians and laypersons alike, can understand the implications of what seems to be a continuous conflict between the demand for services and the value we are willing to place on those services. Sadly, we are finding ourselves forced to do more with less, and admirably, many of us are. What we have here is a collision between the old way of thinking and the new reality. Certainly, one of the primary goals of the field is to provide excellent service to our patrons. Many of us, I presume, believe that this can be achieved even while we are reading our Journals while stationed on the reference desk. While I agree with the well documented research on reference anxiety, and I would even venture to agree with the belief that people are less likely to approach someone who appears “busy” (though decidedly less so after having logged many a reference desk shift hour), I do not believe that banning the reading of professional literature while at the public service desks is the ideal solution. This is simply one of the lasting pillars of an ideology that still stands, guarded from the elements likely because its supporters have themselves not had to face the weathering tides, the daily push and pull, for quite some time. We are sadly underestimated if there exists this idea that as professionals, we are unable to multitask and still provide exceptional customer service. Some of us have unconsciously grown up in the era of multitasking and didn’t even need a name for it until those same persons assigned one to our mode of living. Many of us pride ourselves on the service we provide and cringe when we see a colleague unwilling to lower their shoulders against the winds of change and continue the righteous march. I will not place the blame solely on the old guard however. I think there exists an equally devastating detriment to progress in our field, albeit one less obvious though more widespread. It gives rise to the lofty languages that cloud our communications and can create an unintended backlash that will stifle creativity. This second deadly obfuscation is takingourselvestooseriouslyitis. It is a killer of fun, a breeder of rules, decrees and policy, an enabler of hierarchy and a real downer on facebook. In conclusion: tl;dr – also – what the hell is a yiss?

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