Blatant Berry: Information Trust

I am trying. I really want to join the Library 2.0 crowd, even next week when it turns into 3.0 and then beyond that. I've spent very illuminating time with the young bloggers and techies from Library Camp at the Darien Library, CT, and the young believers at WebJunction. I've read the paper on “The Library as Conversation” that David Lankes and his colleagues posted so everyone could participate in its editing. I discuss and debate on several electronic discussion lists and lurk on many others.

I get RSS feeds from all over the web. I follow the blogs, especially the ones by Jenny (Levine), Karen (Schneider), Michael (Stephens), John (Blyberg), Jessamyn (West), Louise (Berry), Mary (Minow), and lots of others focused on librarians and libraries. I even read the stuff coming from the right-wing nuts, and, of course, the Republicans and Democrats. I surf Flickr and have been spotted viewing sites on MySpace. I subscribe to an aggregator that alerts me when there is new stuff, and I add daily to my “favorites” list.

I even just started a blog (blatant.libraryjournal.com), where I plan to spill out my innermost yearnings, revelations, insights, a touch of gossip, and, of course, misperceptions, adding my own stream of “information” to all the others in this new wonderland of channels. The “wonderland” grows so fast that I am always behind the wave or the curve.

In other words, I'm trying to adapt to the postmodern notion that there is no authority, no expertise, no trustworthy source. I think the bloggers may be right that the world is better off with less intervention from journalists, editors, gatekeepers, and others who used to preside over the flow of information.

I spend nearly half of each morning separating the spam from the substance in my email inbox, even though hundreds of messages are filtered out to a spam folder. I watch a dozen “news” programs, from the Fox spin doctors to the twirling CNN talking heads. I read the New York Times and my local Connecticut daily. I still read a few magazines (even LJ). I listen religiously to NPR every morning and watch Jim Lehrer every night. I have cards from three public and several academic libraries. I'm not unusual: everyone I know does the same kinds of things.

Despite all the attention this brave new world demands, indeed takes, whether I surrender willingly or under the duress of a world that keeps asking, “Did you see...?” I'm even pushing it to colleagues. I'm as fast to ask, “Did you see…?” as anyone. I even buy the idea that this maelstrom of information is more democratic.

Sometimes, however, I have doubts. I long simply to receive trustworthy information and not contribute to the flood. I wonder whether we're creating the ideal democracy of true freedom or the chaotic, unreliable “democracy” of spin, lie, and sensationalism.

At times I wish for the “democracy” of my youth, when we could trust President Franklin Roosevelt, trust the government, trust Walter Cronkite, trust Huntley and Brinkley, trust Ed Murrow, trust the New York Times, and, above all, trust what we found in the library. Sometimes I wonder if we've created instead the democracy of the mob.

Of course, the United States I miss so much probably never existed. Yet in my childhood it was a world in which we were right, God was on our side, and our enemies, in those days the Germans and the Japanese, were evil and wrong.

Still, I salute, applaud, and want to partake of the democracy and freedom of these new channels and devices and Lankes's notion that the best way to knowledge is through “conversation.” But on some Monday mornings, when I'm halfway through the spam of the weekend in search of real messages, I miss the days when you could believe your favorite sources: the President, the library, CBS News, and, of course, the New York Times.

jberry@reedbusiness.com