Bloggers and Coders - Tennant: Digital Libraries

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Roy Tennant

Bloggers and Coders
September 2, 2008

This may or may not be obvious to everyone, but there are at least two distinct communities of library techies:

1) Social software users and advocates, and
2) Hardcore coders.

Individuals can occupy both groups, certainly, but it's worth making a distinction. Members of Group 1 (herewith known simply as "Bloggers") are often quite capable of configuring and installing blog and wiki software, but they tend not to write software. Members of Group 2 (herewith known simply as "Coders") will often use blogs and wikis, but they can also be seen coding enhancements to them.

I bring this up since it seems clear that this division plays itself out in a number of ways. One of the most obvious ways is that they tend to go to different conferences. The Bloggers have settled into the Information Today conferences Computers in Libraries and Internet Librarian and also LITA via BIGWIG, whereas the Coders tend to go to Access and have even created their own conference from scratch, Code4Lib.

Neither group is better or worse than the other, we need them both. They bring different sets of skills and abilities to the enterprise. But it's worth identifying the sub-species so we are clear what those skills might be and what we can expect them to do for us. Also, as much as any individual wishes to, we should make it easy for Bloggers to become Coders. For some, that may be a logical career path, while for others it will not be.

I think it's great that we have so many librarians in both of these categories. It wasn't all that long ago when we had none in one category and not too many in the other. Now we have many in both, and more coming. Let's support their initiative, foster their further development, and reap the associated awards for our institutions.

Posted by Roy Tennant on September 2, 2008 | Comments (6)

September 3, 2008
In response to: Bloggers and Coders
Sam Popowich commented:

There's been recent discussion of librarians who fall between the two groups (sorry, can't find the link right now); those for whom CIL is not hard-core enough, but who find Code4Lib over their heads. This may only be the result of libraries staffed mainly by bloggers who are being increasingly required to up the ante and begin coding (the position I'm in at the University of Ottawa). It will be interesting to see how this situation changes over the next few years.

September 3, 2008
In response to: Bloggers and Coders
Steve Lawson commented:

Sam, this godforsaken comment form (not your fault, Roy, I know) won't allow me to paste in URLs, but you may be thinking of Meredith Farkas' post "Value in the online world," Dorothea Salo's post "Finding tech training’s middle ground" or my own (somewhat poorly named) post "code4you." There was also a great brainstorming thread on FriendFeed. We have seen a good amount of interest from "bloggers" who'd like to be "coders" (at least to some degree) and a bit of interest from "coders" who'd like to give the "bloggers" a hand up.

September 3, 2008
In response to: Bloggers and Coders
Roy Tennant commented:

Steve, thanks a lot for the pointers (sans URLs, I'm sorry), when I wrote this post I was thinking of that conversation and unfortunately didn't find it before I needed to post the piece. Thanks for supplying at least some search terms we can use to locate the relevant posts. I agree that there is a need out there to increase the technical chops of the blogging community and there have been some good suggestions on how to go about that.

September 4, 2008
In response to: Bloggers and Coders
bobrobboy commented:

In addition to not attending the same conferences (an accurate generalization) "bloggers" and "coders" often are not reading the same information. And while there may be some overlap in their OPML files, their conversations typically do not cross paths (another generalization). This is unfortunate. In my experience as a "blogger," because the product of the two different perspectives is greater than either the "blogger" or the "code" can produce on their own. Mashing up these two communities is critical to leaping forward.

September 6, 2008
In response to: Bloggers and Coders
Jonathan Rochkind commented:

The "coders" in fact, for better or for worse, tend to be rather suspicious of lots of the social software initiatives that they see the 'bloggers' getting excited about, thinking they are diversions from what actually helps our users get their work done. You won't find many 'coders' getting excited about Second Life, for instance.

September 13, 2008
In response to: Bloggers and Coders
K.G. Schneider commented:

Roy, I'd add that there are also UX/IA folk -- also very different, with different skill sets and conferences -- and web designers, who may be very expert with the code required to produce a well-designed website, and then folks with gradients of experience and smatterings of other skill sets (or am I just saying, "heck knows where I fit in..."). Jonathan, your comment made me arch one eyebrow... while I know where you're going with that comment and don't fully disagree, it's a far cry from the extremes of SL to some of the social engagement mechanisms some of us consider having high potential for next-gen tools. Promoting the overlap would promote more cooperation and understanding, as well.