The end of technology?

Worked on creating meaningful but manageable weeding lists to send to branches. Decided lists with more than five but less than 50 titles should work. Ran high circulation weeding lists for each branch in Decision Center [a software program] for adult fiction items that had circulated more than 100 times. I was pleased that I had to lower the number to 75 or 50 for a few branches in order to get more than five items on the list. I plan to run similar lists regularly so that branches can stay on top of weeding but not feel overwhelmed by huge lists with thousands of items on them. Also, I want to find more creative ways to look at weeding beyond the traditional low circulation dusty book lists. Decision Center has several reports to help with this such as High Circ Weeding, Supply/Demand Weeding, and Age of Collection Weeding.
Gayle, support services librarian

Although it may sound like doth protesting too much et cetera, I really have nothing against technology. My household boasts 3 eReaders/tablets, I watch entirely too much cable TV, our microwave is a blessing, and I like breakfast smoothies and occasionally curly hair, thanks the blender and the curling iron, respectively.

My problem comes when we conflate the positive results of technology -- the curly hair, the mid-afternoon popcorn -- with the tools used to reach these ends. In education, this often means rhapsodizing over a school simply having an iPad or a Smart Board... regardless of whether these technology tools help students learn any more or better than they would with chalk on a board or a printed book (also technology tools, of course). Sometimes they do, but it's in the using and the user that determines the results, not the tool itself that magically makes good thing happen.

Neil Postman said all of this better in The End of Education about 15 years ago, though his distaste of electronic technology (specifically television) was much higher than mine.

BUT.

What Gayle has done in this example is use the technology tools available to her brilliantly.

Weeding -- the professional librarian task of evaluating a collection, whether print or electronic resources, and determining what should go and what should stay -- is frequently a difficult and painful process, but Gayle has harnessed the power of creating lists with the Decision Center technology that will be extraordinarily helpful to our branch libraries in the process.

I'm in awe. Not of the technology (though it does sound pretty nifty) so much as the efficient USE of the technology by a human being who knows how to use it.

Color me impressed. Just don't use Photoshop if a crayon works just as well.