What Will You Do?

What happens if you find yourself in a field you love, but working in places that don't let you do the things you love about the field? It might not be the institution's fault; what you love to do might not be relevant for its constituency. The things you love to do just might not be needed where you work.

What do you do about this?

In a related note, Seth Godin posted recently about the future of libraries. He says:

They can't survive as community-funded repositories for books that individuals don't want to own (or for reference books we can't afford to own.) More librarians are telling me (unhappily) that the number one thing they deliver to their patrons is free DVD rentals. That's not a long-term strategy, nor is it particularly an uplifting use of our tax dollars.

Here's my proposal: train people to take intellectual initiative.

Once again, the net turns things upside down. The information is free now. No need to pool tax money to buy reference books. What we need to spend the money on are leaders, sherpas and teachers who will push everyone from kids to seniors to get very aggressive in finding and using information and in connecting with and leading others.

This is why I got into the field. Perhaps some day I'll work somewhere they'll let me do it.