lifelong learning

The first thing I was told to do in this blog for OPL’s “O! what a geek” program was to post what lifelong learning means to me. (well, ok, it’s the second as I posted a test post first. Because it might just be more interesting than this one, I decided to keep it)

To me, lifelong learning is mandatory, but I might be taking the learning part too literally. I mean, the world around us is constantly changing so when we’re driving down the street and the cop car behind you turns on his lights you might think “Oooh, never saw that stop sign there before” or maybe it’s just that you’d never realized just how pretty the inside of your car was bathed in the red flashing lights behind you. Or that wonderful feeling of dread when you remember you forgot to put the licensing stickers on your plates or dispose (a.k.a. smoke) those last couple joints currently hidden under the front passenger’s seat. – I seem to have gotten lost around here – oh, yes, lifelong learning. Any which way, something happens and you suddenly learn new things (stop sign, pretty red lights, put the damn stickers on when you get them, maybe my car wasn’t the smartest place to hide my dope, whatever).

But even if it isn’t the cop, we all learn new things unintentionally, it’s kinda hard not to. It may not be all that intentional learning such as studying a new language or watching the wonderful cycle of life on the discovery channel (did you know lions mate constantly –okay, kinda constantly, obviously they have to sleep- for 2 to 4 days straight? And did you ever really want to know that much about lion mating habits in the first place?) but learning that someone in the house moved the table three inches to the left and now your little toe has swelled larger than your biggest toe is also important. After all, when’s the next time you really need to know about the mating habits of lions? You will need to know the part about the table being moved when the swelling goes down and you can walk again.

Yeah, I’m being kinda difficult about this. When someone gives me a set topic to write about, I tend to take off in another direction. It’s that stupid obnoxious streak I have that makes me want to do something even more when told not to. My actual point is that whether we realize it or not, we are all lifelong learners or we wouldn’t be able to survive in the incredibly rapidly changing world we live in. The degree of what we learn is up to us, so if you are willing to give the time and effort to it, I’m sure you could learn another language at any age.

As for what I expect from this program – a $40 gift certificate to Best Buy.

Just kidding (mostly). The challenging part of working in a library is how much technology we use and how often other people need our help with it. While not exactly as knowledgeable as Tech. Services, we are expected to know quite a bit about our own computers, their programs and a number of web resources. We also need to consider all aspects of information technology. The internet has offered information at our fingertips, but we need to help people understand the type of information they are getting. I’m pretty sure if you’re writing a paper about lions, your teacher is going to give you a better grade if you use reputable sources rather than what some guy wrote in his personal blog or in a chat room. It’s kind of like comparing apples to oranges. Both are good in their own way, but an orange pie isn’t going to taste as good as an apple pie and apple sorbet isn’t the same as orange sorbet.

The point I’m trying to make is that technology has become very important to the sharing of information and those of us who work in libraries have to keep up with technology or we may find ourselves obsolete (a.k.a. out of a job). After all, Wikipedia is great for getting the general idea about a topic before starting your actual research but citing it in a paper isn’t smart because I could be making that stuff about the lions up and entering that information in there myself…