Kyle Banerjee's Blog

One thing I’ve always wondered is when age would start catching up with me. I’ve been told for years about how my attitudes and a number of other things would change. None of these predictions has come to pass except my hair has mostly fallen out. Since I buzz my head like many other cyclists, the fact that my hair doesn’t grow is no biggie.

I’ve never felt I have generation gap with today’s college students until yesterday. Apparently, Alternative Reality Games (or ARGs) are extremely popular. The basic idea is that you plant clues in the real world which makes people seek information on websites.

For example, to advertise a session at a local conference, someone sent me a piece of paper in the mail with nothing but a library call number on it and a web address. I wasn’t expecting this mail, so I did what I do with all unsolicited mail — I just pitched it. Someone in my office saw it and asked me if I was curious. I said no because it was undoubtedly some vendor trying to draw me into a dialogue since they couldn’t sell their products the regular way. I get calls, letters, and emails from people using strange angles to promote things all the time.

Later, I learned that a lot of people that received the same mail that I did wondered what it was and investigated until they resolved what was going on. This behavior puzzles me — I imagined such constructs would appeal exclusively to extremely bored, socially inept, lonely people. Turns out these things are very popular with lots of people even though in the real world, they are often used to promote movies, music, and other products.

I just don’t get it. I don’t even get around to the important stuff, and I’m definitely not going to waste time resolving weird details that appear to have no meaning. If the new way of doing things is to hang out in ARGs rather than reality, I’ll be perfectly happy being a dinosaur.

One of the things that’s always made me nuts is how quick people can be to thwart others from doing anything new based on little more than vague fears.

Recently, a school asked a university library where a colleague works if they could download catalog records. The school library was hoping to avoid manually keying in all this info themselves since that is time consuming (i.e. expensive).

The university library said no. Lame excuses were given as to why fulfilling the request was impossible, but I suspect that the real reasons were related to emotional discomfort rather than an actual problem. The fact of the matter is that the university runs a publicly accessible Z39.50 server (and intends to continue doing so), it has the legal right to distribute their records even before you consider the fact that they were created at public expense, the system impact would be virtually nonexistent, and it would help the school. As a practical matter, the school didn’t need permission in first place and asking was really a courtesy.

Only library geeks even know what Z39.50 is, let alone know how to use it, so I’m scratching my head as to why an organization would host such a server if they don’t want people using it. It’s like buying a subscription to satellite TV and blocking out all the channels.

If we are going to wring our hands as we try to figure out how we will adapt our services for the future, we could start by not tossing up roadblocks unless there is a compelling reason. I don’t know how many projects I’ve seen sunk by nothing more substantial vague discomfort on the part of one or two individuals in gatekeeper positions. It seems like I’m constantly hearing people say something to the effect of “I’ll never try that again” because they were sent to bureaucratic and meeting hell for asking about doing things a different way.

This example might sound petty, but it’s stuff like this that really holds us back. I recently had a conversation with someone who expressed surprise at how easy it is for me and a few others to ask for favors. There’s no secret to it. Just look for excuses to help people rather than excuses for why you shouldn’t. If you make life easy and enjoyable for others, they like dealing with you and cut you slack when you need it. Otherwise, don’t be surprised if people treat you like you have a communicable disease whenever you come near…