Job Seekers at the Library

I recently asked to meet with some people from the Southern Worcester County Workforce Investment Board (WIB). They had been thinking about public libraries while some of us were thinking about them. There’s fertile ground for collaboration, since their jobs are to provide services that job seekers in libraries need. Libraries are open when One Stop Career Centers are closed and there are just five centers in South County. So libraries can provide access hours while the WIB can provide insight for librarians and in-library information for job seekers.

In a very informal survey by email, I learned that only a few libraries are actively engaged with area Career Centers and many are interested in providing more information to job seekers. This could be the start of something good.

Words, words, words

"What do you read, my lord?" asked Polonious. "Words, words, words...." answered Hamlet, suggesting that the words had little meaning. Did Hamlet live in the twenty-first century?

I'm a word lover. The word creep we live with makes me unhappy, and technology has to take a big chunk of the responsibility. What's harvest mean? To crawl and gather electronic data electronically. Ingest? To upload electronic records into a database.

The word use that annoys me most is the variations on "to create." Slap together a web page? You created it. Put some numbers in a spreadsheet? You created it. Started a wiki? You created it.

With creation so devalued, exactly what meaning is left?