I’m old enough to have experienced numerous business plans, curricula, and mission statements, some of them diametrically opposed to their predecessor. It’s made me both cynical and moderate. Nothing is one-size-fits-all. The challenge is matching a variety of tools with a varied customer base, along with the balancing act of funding and staff education.
I’ve viewed the videos and read the articles, references and responses at least twice, and some things I agree with and others… not so much. Of course we want to connect with people and have them see us as useful and relevant (and therefore valuable and worth funding). There are some neat tools that will allow us to connect with people in their space, but we can’t abandon our 1.0 users for whom the physical library will always be that space.
I’m in the camp that thinks libraries and librarians have always been 2.0, and we must be able to communicate with our users in ways that will be meaningful to them. Blogs, IM, and social networking sites are flashier new tools that will strike responsive chords with some patrons - or attract new ones – but others may just be looking for someone who understands Spanish or ASL.
One of the things I'm leery about is user-created content. I’m a control freak (a cataloger!) and not a big fan of “radical trust.” In an ideal world all user-created content would contribute to the general pool of knowledge. But I’ve seen too many worthless “reviews” at Amazon and IMDb, vandalized entries and editing wars at Wikipedia, and vituperative anonymous comments at my local newspaper’s website to have much faith in that. Yes, there’s some great non-authoritative content out there, and I agree with John Blyberg that we need to distinguish between authoritative and non-authoritative stuff to our patrons. But you may have to sift through a lot of dross to find the gold.
This may sound as if I'm negative about Library 2.0; actually I'm not. I look forward to learning new things and expanding my comfort zone.
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