#2 - What is Library 2.0?

I have read extensively about this in the last year. I fall somewhere in the middle between the "Webtamers" (i.e. Michael Stephens, http://www.tametheweb.com/) and the Annoyed Librarian (http://www.annoyedlibrarian.blogspot.com/), who waxes poetic about "Twopointopians".



Re the Blyberg post - what bothers me is the assertion that we need to "make libraries relevant". Well, my library is pretty darn relevant in the community. Can we make it MORE relevant. Of course. Can we attempt to bring people who don't yet feel it is relevant into the library? Of course - but the idea that people aren't already coming in droves is ludicrous here. I'd love to get some things like RA blogs going - but it's not the "staff" who are slowing this down. And why does the library's mission need to be "fundamentally" changed? Also, I read somewhere recently that Millenials DO use the library frequently, so I'm not sure about that assertion either. Yes, there are a lot of issues coming down the pike which will need to be dealt with - open source software and catalogs is a big one. If you asked me what the big fundamental change in the last decade for the library has been, however, it's been the Internet's presence, and not just for "reference work" or "content". The behavior issue has been the biggest, and that is the one that "leadership" has failed to accept. There is a library in this state which has (or perhaps now had) an institute for the library of the future. Well, the library of the future was present in several of the branches, in which security guards were needed. THAT was the real future, until management realized it and started to do something about it. Librarians don't have much time for 2.0 stuff if they spend most of their day dealing with Internet-related behavior problems.