Library 2.0 ... Moving forward with a critical eye

Here's a pix of Second Life's Library 2.0. Hmmm. It's still a picture of a building. I'd like to see multiple planes here...maybe a picture of a galaxy, sort of like the Jetsons. I'm babbling. I just read about 20 articles on Library 2.0.

#15 -- Library 2.0

I felt a little psychizo reading Annoyed Librarian's "A Librarian's Anti-2.0 Manifesto". I kept going "Yeah!," but for both her comments AND the Library 2.0 Manifesto. We've got to be critical when viewing change AND we have to have great vision. We need to be grounded in reality (who really are our customers now and who are our potential customers), what changes make sense and what's just 2.0techywow stuff?. I sometimes feel like a nighttime soap actor, calling out "The baby, the baby!!!" I'm referring to the baby that's always being thrown out with the bathwater.

I like the concept of "the long tail." Here's a quote from the LJ article called Library 2.0, "users might be better served if librarians consider what's called the long tail. Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief of Wired, who coined the phrase in an article of the same name in 2004, argues that the demand for movies or books that are not hits far outnumbers the demand for those that are hits. Match those nonhits with the people who are interested in seeing them, and suddenly you have a group of constituents equal to or greater than those who want to see and read the hits." This is what many librarians at Queens have been trying to articulate in regards to our collections. While I want to reach the individual (who combined make up a mass) with our existing collections, I also believe that providing more electronic documents and other digital items is also needed.

Customer input is an essential part of Library 2.0 and we are definitely not doing enough to engage our customers in a dialog about our offerings. Customer reviews of our titles would be great, as well as polls on our Website. And another big one: customer and librarian crafted bibliographies on particular topics that can be accessed on results screens.

One of the articles mentioned that librarians should not be trainers (that if our electronic resources are too complicated, we need to adjust the resources). While I am all for making our databases more standardized and user-friendly, I believe there is still a lot of training we can and should do. Helping customers identify the best database to search for a particular need; explaining the process of multiple searches to narrow a topic; providing tips for databases (use "and" between concepts and click on Full Text). Also, championing the multiple formats (print, electronic, audio, etc.) to meet their needs.

Oh, I could go on, but then I wouldn't finish my 23 1/2. More to follow as time permits!!