Geek or Nerd?

Rory Litwin has a thought-provoking piece over at Library Juice.

Perhaps the most pressing issue facing librarianship is one that is unlikely to receive serious scholarly attention. It is, to put it simply, a battle presently being fought between two camps of librarians. Some may cite generational conflict as the primary conflict in librarianship today; baby-boomers representing traditional knowledge of librarianship as well as bibliographic knowledge, and GenXers representing facility with technology. There is some truth to that picture, but it is primarily a distraction from the real conflict. That conflict, I submit, is the battle between geeks and nerds.

It's half tongue-in-cheek, but made me think. I'm not at all convinced this is generational - or, at least the young librarians I know are hardly uncritical about technology, even if they're more up-to-speed with it than some of us (ahem). And there are a number of gray-haired academic library directors who I've speaking at conferences about the latest technology as if its a religioud sacrament.

I also think this may be a dichotomy that's more likely to apply in large and/or academic libraries. It's my impression that public librarians are less interested in technology or bibliographic knowledge than they are in people and their needs. (Am I being a romantic, Charlotte?)