Its an irony

I was in Chicago over the weekend. You might be interested to know why I was there. I "gatecrashed" into a private collaborative meeting organized by the University of Illinois hoping to gain some knowledge (since I am now in MLIS program) and networking opportunity. I joined in the dinner. The discussions were interesting. But 90% of the time, I was trying very hard to digest my food and the abstruse concepts exchanged over the meal. But as my inviter said, I was quite brave to have sat through the dinner amongst these computer scientists and information professors. Indeed, I felt very inadequate. I had dyspepsia symptoms after that...

I consider myself an administrator in the heritage field. If there is one thing that dawn on me after the event, is how there is need to close up the distance between administrators of libraries & heritage institutions, and computer scientists & information experts, who are paladins of information access. These experts are supposed to help make life of librarians, heritage managers and ultimately the world's clientele easier. Their treatise and the things they preach may not need to be transparent to end-users; but there is a need for libraries and museums administrators and their management to appreciate enough for buy-ins. Unfortunately, with the advent of technology especially web-based technology, further made more difficult by recondite and almost philosophical concepts preached by specialists, distance had sped off. We need to pull it back.