just jump in!

Sometimes the biggest barrier to learning new technology is us. Me. You. And that part, once realized, can be pretty liberating.

That's why I'm always emboldened when I remember all of the impressive librarians we've spotlighted who overcame their fears, or took a giant leap of faith to learn something new that helped their community.

Faye Hover, the Library Director at Smith Welch Memorial Library in Hearne, TX is one of the many special foliks we spotlighted who took a chance and "fell in love" with computers: 

When Hover first arrived at Smith­ Welch, the library had an IT person on staff who was reluctant to show her how to use the equipment. Undeterred, she went about teaching herself by carefully observing his configurations. 'First, I looked at how he had everything set up. I didn't make any changes; I just looked at everything,' she said. 'Granted, you need to know a little bit about it, but if you just look at things first then you can learn, you can learn how to do it. It's just a matter of wanting to enough.'

An avid believer that everyone should use computers, she believes there’s no age limit to learning about technology, and feels becoming computer literate is just a matter of wanting to do it. Hover has worked hard to become a largely self­ taught one ­woman IT team, installing, maintaining, and even purchasing equipment for the library all on her own."

Such an inspiration! Hover went on to learn more and more about computers--she even took one apart--so she could keep the them running and offer services and programs to her community.

And then yesterday, Shelly Drumm, the Emerging Technologies Consultant at BCR commented on my blog post with a similar story from a Library/Media Aide who was unsure about using Meebo:

"Ruth Taylor, the Library/Media Aide at the school, decided to reach beyond her comfort zone to get the chat widget project rolling when she realized that as a librarian she couldn’t afford to lag far behind her students when it came to technology. She wrote to tell me that learning the language of technology was the hardest piece in figuring out how to do what she wanted, but that the process was definitely rewarding! Even better, it gave her a little knowledge and confidence when it came to other tech projects. Here’s how she put it:

'And another project came along regarding widgets, and I knew what that was! So, my advice would be to jump in and at least try a few things and try not to get totally frustrated, because when the job is done and successful you can give a great big Yes!'"

YES! I loved reading this because it got right to the heart of it: new things, especially technology, can be intimidating, especially when, as Ruth shared, students or patrons are coming to the library with more knowledge than the staff. Whether you harness the knowledge from your patrons (as Annie Adamson shared) or learn that new technology, just "Jump in!" and see where it leads you.

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