The 2006 recipient of TIME Magazine's coveted Person of the Year is none other than YOU. Yes, you, your staff, your patrons and everyone else. All thanks to our good friend, the World Wide Web.
What are you doing at your library to leverage this power-to-the-people democratizing force? Have you offered classes on Flickr? Started a library blog where patrons can leave comments? Uploaded library videos to YouTube? Showed teens online safety and how to Pimp Their MySpace?
If you haven't done anything yet, make it your New Year's Resolution for 2007! Because one thing is certain: this whole Internet thing isn't a fad anymore. If you're not surfing the wave, you're being left behind.
This is an opportunity to build a new kind of international understanding, not politician to politician, great man to great man, but citizen to citizen, person to person. It's a chance for people to look at a computer screen and really, genuinely wonder who's out there looking back at them. Go on. Tell us you're not just a little bit curious.