Information Takes Over

There still seems to be much discussion tagged with Library 2.0, trying to define it (I had a go), trying to pin it down and make it subservient.I think that all this discussion about, whether Library 2.0 with or without quotes is a good thing a bad thing, a technical thing or a thing we used to do anyway, is highlighting an awareness of the need to constantly re-evaluate our services. If nothing else, the L2 discussion has prompted countless librarians to look at what they do and think, “hey, we could do that!”.

I’m sure that many people are likely to want to hold on to the L2 term, to cosset it and make it their own. Some may even want to use it as a hanger for their business ideas. and that’s fine by me.

The two most important things (for me at least) to come out of the discussion over the past few months is the awareness that as a proffession, we have access to a great deal of information processing power and understanding. We know how to look for stuff, and more importantly we can find stuff. Now we are using technology to find new ways to push that stuff out to our users, to allow them to find it as easily as we did.
The other, is that as a proffesion made up of generally lovely people, who love to share ideas and help out to the fullest extent of our abilities, we have begun to realise the importance of social tools and how they can help our users and ourselves.

I myself, although aware of a few social tools, never really used them until this year, and now I wonder at the slick dependency that those tools are begining to exert.

Lets take this community building (something that libraries have sought to do since they tried to distract people from the terrors of alcohol) and apply it in new ways. Yes we worry about issue figures and funding and threats of closure, but we need to make ourselves indispensable to the people we serve.

If our users can’t live without us…

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