#15 Web 2.0 and the future of libraries

Hi

Re: OCLC Next Space Newsletter – Web 2.0: Where will the next generation of the web it take libraries?

I thought that the views on the site were interesting, but mostly a bit "out there" for the forseeable future, but good goals for a public/uni environment - to make use of technology as a value add.

Points I'd like to highlight are:

http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/3.htm "technolust"

I like the term "technolust" - I can apply it to any number of youngish men of my acquaintance (who shall remain forever cash poor, but keeping the IT/entertainment world going). Just because it's out there, doesn't mean that we need to create a need for it. The need comes first. However, there is the imperitive to find out what technology is out there and keep it in mind in case a need comes up. That's the main benefit of doing Learning 2.0 I guess.

http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/5.htm I liked John J. Riemer's illustration of having geographic names embedded in the middle of subject headings that are mapped to latitude and longitude coordinates so that there's a graphical means of searching by place, new ways of easily asking for materials about nearby places, and hierarchical browsing by place - it was a nice, tangible example that I can immediately see would be useful, terrific even, to have - a value add, rather than a gimmick, that would have long term use beyond immediate novelty value. That's the problem I think a lot of 2.0 technology has in a library/information environment - genuine and feasible value add instead of novelty value.

I went a bit further and had a look at this page too:

http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/advocacy.htm
Great story of a rural school library
I especially liked the idea of their starting out with a big ILL commitment – I think that's a good way to go - boosting that service and not buying into the collection so much. Make a way for clients to check the catalogues of nearby Unis or LADD and then request ILL from the library when not held in collection – users get direct use of (and knowledge of) a much bigger collection and could be useful to gather the info for collection development. This is probably a happening thing all over already! But, I liked it too! I guess I'm identifying with the bit on this page http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/2.htm re building just in case collections - so much only gets borrowed a couple of times, but then I don't think there's as much electronic or other access as was implied. There will always be a need for big collections.

Here endeth the blog and Week 6.

Cheers

Stormy's mum

(Stormy is probably fast asleep, lucky thing)