A little meme that's floating around the library blogs is "what are your tech-nots"? I just read Steve Lawson's, and Laura Crossett's I read the other day, plus a few others. I think like some who have done this already, I consider myself pretty computer savvy, but hardly an expert. Here's a few of my tech-nots:
- The inside of a computer is not a huge mystery to me, I can probably point out a few key components, but don't ask me to fix anything in there. It's a good thing my hardware doesn't break down very often, I'm more likely to send that stuff into a repair shop than I am with software issues.
- I learned how to program in high school and college, and if you really want to go back far, I've been typing code into a computer since I was about 9 or 10, but ask me to program anything now and it would take me awhile just to sort everything out. I think this is just because I don't do it all the time, if I did use those skills I could probably learn a new programming language a week. I'm happy enough that I can look at some code and not feel like it's a foreign language, it's more like a puzzle I need to work through for awhile.
- I never got into Skype or any sort of voice chatting. No reason, other than I really didn't have a suitable computer for such things until recently. Now that I have one I still don't do it.
- I love gadgets, but I always feel far behind the gadget curve. My cell phone already feels obsolete to me. Of course this isn't a huge surprise to me either, librarians don't exactly have a lot of money to throw around at new cell phones and iPods every time they come out. I admit I was drooling over a new phone last night. It turns out when I do want these things I tend to want the most expensive one in the store.
- Lately we've been a little more ambitious in our tech purchases. My husband got a PS3 for his birthday, of course with that purchase came a new flat screen TV for Christmas, we finally got cable TV too. Well, the first time I tried to turn on the TV I couldn't figure it out. I remember either calling or IMing my husband at work because I couldn't figure out how our 3 remotes worked in conjunction with one another (TV, cable box, and receiver). I finally gave up and decided to not watch TV (which is probably for the better anyway). I can turn on the the TV all by myself now but I still have to think a little too hard about the whole process. Don't even ask me to program a universal remote, I can never get those things to work.
- I love games, but I'm not a gamer. The closest I come is my Sims 2 obsession, and I don't even have time for that anymore. Last night we were in Best Buy and I found 2 expansion packs I wanted to buy, even though I have one at home that I haven't played yet. I leave that gaming stuff to my husband, but I do wish I had more time to play games. I'm a little more motivated now that we have a decent game console now. I was doing pretty well with Guitar Hero last night!
There's a few tricks I've learned that have helped me get to the point where I feel comfortable with technology though. It helps that we've had computers in my house before computers were cool so they weren't mysterious machines to me. My dad even gave me one of his to just play on when I was a kid, and that was probably the thing that started it all. My "no fear" attitude started really young. When I was in college I remember working in the library and we just got our new Millennium automation system. I knew nothing about Millennium at the time, it was just another computer program to me. I remember my circ supervisor couldn't figure out some sort of admin type thing. I logged in under the admin password and fixed whatever she needed fixed. She asked how I knew how to do that, for me it was just common sense and playing around, I really didn't know how to do it. Then she said, "you really have no fear when it comes to this stuff do you?"
I'm constantly telling people at work that you can't really break these things. I still don't think there's a problem in Millennium that can't be fixed without a little common sense (well most times) and I still have no fear. And if I really don't know how to do something I pretend I do and I can usually learn something from my successes or failures along the way. So no fear, and confidence have got me this far.
The other thing that occurred to me while reading through a few of the other librarian's posts is that for everything we're not good at when it comes to computers and technology, there's a lot that we are good at. For example, Steve Lawson listed relational databases as one of his tech-nots. Well it turns out that I can confidently say I'm quite good at relational databases and I don't even have to make it up. For every tech-not I have, there's somebody out there in library land where they are extremely proficient in that skill. One thing I love about the library community too is that we're willing to help and give advice in the areas where we're most proficient. So if you sum all of our skills, there's no such thing as a "tech-not" in the library community. If there's one skill that all librarians share, it is that we're resourceful and there's nothing that we can't do with the help of our colleagues.
