Open Source Libraries and the Unbearable Lightness of Active Participation

Post Evergreen Conference 2010 and mid-go live process (eyeballs deep in documentation and instructional design) I am struck over and over again (with semi-tiresome regularity) that
a) I want very much to contribute to this community
b) I wish there was some *one* person to just make a few decisions for me already
c) This one person could maybe be me, but well, by what "authority"?
d) How does one (even want to) tread the "Library Culture" and the "Geek Culture" anyway?
e) The whole idea is *exhausting*
f) This attitude - some hellbrew of enthusiasm, inertia, and random socialized mores - no doubt forms at least one stanchion in the rickety structure of modern librarianship.

Trying hard not to get maudlin and peevish...

Monday morning epiphany moment

I just scanned a Cory Doctorow post on BoingBoing about Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational: subjecting the "rational consumer" hypothesis to scientific scrutiny Boing Boing. On which, coincidentally, I just placed a hold. I made it to this statement:

[Ariely] then goes on to explain how companies that ask their employees to work harder for social reasons ("you're part of the team") but dismiss the employees for economic reasons ("we need to cut costs") end up in an impossible place. So do companies that ask customers to come make a purchase as a social transaction ("join the family!") but then treat the transaction after the fact as a purely economic matter ("you should have read the fine-print").

At which point my jar dropped, a bolt of lighting struck me in the third eye, and my morning's caffeine condensed behind my solar plexus. This is exactly how libraries treat their employees, and their patrons, and then have the self-delusional gall to wonder why it's so hard to find and keep engaged staff and foster passionate users. I am so glad Pioneer has such amazing delivery, because I can't wait to actually read the book.