The Liminal Librarian

I didn't write about the horrifying Kathy Sierra situation a while back; the most I could add was a "me too" to that outraged chorus. This did, though, get me thinking about these concepts of "community" and "social" we've been tossing around, and about the blurring of boundaries between our online and offline lives.

We're still so startled when a situation like this intrudes into our online lives, no matter how much time we spend telling our patrons to watch what they post on MySpace and how much time we spend telling our colleagues that what they say online will follow them forever. I know intellectually that random strangers can easily find my posts here in Google and run across discussion list posts from ten years ago. This keeps me from crossing certain lines, but I still write as if I'm talking to a community of friends and colleagues -- and, for the most part, I am, even though I face the occasional angry e-mail or confrontation at a conference. I similarly believe that, for the most part, my neighbors are decent people -- even though one has loud parties, and another lets his large and somewhat scary dogs run free, and another tends to back into our mailbox, and this one is feuding with that one, and... I still believe that, for the most part, public libraries are wonderful institutions, even though patrons at mfpow have thrown things at me, cursed me out, vandalized restrooms, and punched a former colleague in the face.

Online communities get messy because people don't cease being themselves when they get online -- and any antisocial tendencies are exacerbated when you don't have to see your victim face-to-face. The same openness necessary to building that sense of community also leaves us open to those who want to tear these communities down, just as the openness that makes public libraries such special and vibrant institutions also makes them places where you don't necessarily want to let your children wander around unattended.

When we talk about online community and the "social" in software, we need to do so with the same awareness. Just as we need to be aware of the temptation of technolust when thinking about exciting new technologies, we need to be aware of the temptation of connectionlust when thinking about the communities we and our patrons build online. We need to balance our enthusiasm for new possibilities with an awareness of our responsibilities and mission, and an awareness that, when you're dealing with people, life gets messy.

Labels: boundaries, community, sierra