Once upon a time ….

….. is, of course (amongst other things), the first line of Bob Dylan’s Like a Rolling Stone.  There seems to be a lot of Dylan around at the moment which is fine for those of us who grew up with him and remember when he (a) was a genuinely radical poet of protest and (b) could actually sing in tune (sort of).  There was a Dylan evening on BBC4 recently and I watched two terrific Arena programmes – one about Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival and the other about Dylan’s first visit to Britain, when he performed in a play screened by the BBC called Madhouse on Castle Street.  And why, you ask, is this relevant?  Or am I slipping into the to-be-avoided, “what I did on my holidays” blog mode?  Well, I think the Dylan stuff is relevant for two reasons; one technical and the other radical.  The technical reason is about the difficulty of disposal – deciding what to throw out of a growing collection when space is limited.  You see, there is no copy of Madhouse on Castle Street in the BBC archives because the tape of an obscure drama was destroyed and with it the record of Dylan’s first UK performance was lost.

The second reason is radical; about embracing change while sticking to our principles.  Dylan enraged the folkies at Newport by swapping his solo acoustic performance for an electric guitar and a very loud Rock ‘n Roll band.  Dylan embraced the electronic age while staying true to his folk music principles of poetry and protest – despite opposition from his peers.  Librarians come from a radical tradition and we have to be as courageous and committed to change (and as dismissive of dissent?) as Dylan if the library and information profession is to prosper in the information society of the twenty-first century.  But we also have to hold fast to the principles on which our profession has been built.  Perhaps, when I go to meet the Labour government’s current Libraries Minister, Margaret Hodge, I should follow the example of Dylan at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester.  When he went electric and the folkies shouted their opposition, he blasted out Like a Rolling Stone to drown the dissent.  We need to advocate the value of our profession with similar electricity and amplification – otherwise we might find ourselves, after the ambulances go, just a Cinderella service left on Desolation Row …

That was all a bit whimsical, wasn’t it?  (Testing the allowable boundaries of whimsy in the blogosphere, you see …)  But behind the whimsy lies a very pertinent point.  How can we amplify our advocacy so that our value as a profession becomes more visible and recognised?  Any ideas?….