Week 6 final task - thoughts on Library 2.0

I just finished reading Away from the “icebergs” and Into a new world of librarianship. Both authors make good points about Web 2.0 technology and how librarians need to know how to use the tools that their patrons are using in order to continue serving them. I found a couple of points particularly true.

We CANNOT expect our customers to learn how to do things "our way." Library's no longer have a monopoly on information. We are competing for business, and if we make our products nearly impossible to find because of outdated catalogs, the users will go elsewhere. I feel improving library catalogs would be the single most effective thing we could do to stay in business.

Secondly, we should not adopt every new technology that comes along simply for the sake of "keeping up with technology." Each new Web 2.0 technology must be evaluated for each library and its users. All libraries are different and different technologies might be useful. We need to think about what our customers want and remember that they are just as bombarded by an overwhelming amount of choices as we are. We need to make our library and information about the library easy to find online. But we also need to pay attention to whether or not our customers are responding. Are they subscribing to our blogs? Asking questions on our Wikis? And, if not, what are we doing wrong that we can change? Or, maybe we just don't need to use certain Web 2.0 technologies that seem to be ignored by our customers.

I think that learning about all of the Web 2.0 possibilities is a good first step. Once we know what is available to us and our customers we are better prepared to choose the technologies that might actually help us reach our customers.