What's New? What's Next? Or . . . What's Not?

It started about three months ago ... the barrage of "what's next" questions linked with "end of the decade" discussions. And although these lists were similar to the "end of the century" predictions we encountered beginning in 1997, this time around-ten plus years later-we had a fair number of comparable predictions from 1999 to 2009, with a fair amount of "Did they come true? If yes, why, and if not why not?" So I started doing what I typically do-I collected all of the content on "predicting the future," "what's new," "change" and "trending" I could find with plans for my usual approach of applying ideas for new services and resources, how to better serve target audiences, innovations in hardware and software and changes to the world of information, to libraries. The reality was, however, that I didn't really come up with anything too dramatically different from what I had seen and commented on before, and I didn't find many surprises. The usual potential column topics included privacy issues abound (and questions about patron privacy and confidentiality are increasing), social networking (how is it being used and where is it going), new work "tribes" (new groups forming at work such as Gen X'ers and millennials), and the human side of today's technological generation-spending much time online while alone "in person," but seeking and forming online communities and networks. So in trying to decide what was different in the workplace and with today's employees, I decided instead to focus on what hadn't changed-whether we like it or not-and what shouldn't change, no matter what No matter what goes on in countries, regions, states, or neighborhoods-and we all know how territorial we all arethe workplace is rife with an attitude of "this is mine, don't touch it" Whether it's because some employees feel solely responsible for support or maintenance, or because they are afraid of people doing a better job than they are doing, or perhaps because they really are the best person for the job needed, "it's mine!" is not an unusual sentiment or attitude or behavior in the workplace. Historically, we referred to it as "I am the only person who knows the files," and the implication was that if you created something and made it yours, you didn't or shouldn't give the information about that system or process away to anyone else. You knew where everything was, you knew how things were arranged or "filed," and you didn't tell anyone else. That made you indispensible. Now,