Librarians, Welcome to the New Age

Perhaps I have been listening to my son’s music a bit too much or perhaps I am just overly tired from celebrating the New Year with friends and family.  Whatever the cause, when I heard Imagine Dragon’s “Radioactive” this morning it really hit a my librarian brain.

Granted, the lyrics have a post apocalyptic vibe to them that is more akin to Walking Dead or Terminator than the state of libraries. But it just hit a chord with me this morning.  I feel like we are in a new age of information and completely revolutionizing the way people find things.  Things have completely changed, and are still changing. The old way of doing things (the old world) is gone. We are waking up to the new age of information.

Just to prove I am not completely cracked (only half cracked), the singer, Dan Reynolds said the “song is about having an awakening; kind of waking up one day and deciding to do something new, and see life in a fresh way.”  We have to see librarianship in a fresh way if we are going to continue.

According to Reynolds, “A lot of people hear it [Radioactive] in a dark way.” The song is meant to be an empowering song, and I definitely hear it that way.  The changes in libraries can be empowering as well. Like music, it is all up to interpretation. Some may “hear” the library changes in a dark way.  Some may “hear” the changes as an anthem to wake up and do something new in the wake of all the changes.  They will end up shaping their world the way they hear the changes.

To quote a favorite line, “there’s no fate but what we make.”

 

 

One thought on “Librarians, Welcome to the New Age”

  1. “A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart”– Goethe

    This is one of my favorite quotes and I think that it dovetails nicely with this song, and the message of your post. If you fear change, then new tools, new resources, new services, new colleagues, etc, will frighten you; that in turn will affect how you approach those things in service to our patrons. Also, you know, fear and anger lead to the Dark Side (it never hurts to throw in a Star Wars reference. I’m just saying). Thanks for the post, Michelle.

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