Library 2.0

I have abandoned you, my notebook! I apologize sincerely to my readers (I assume there must be at least two), and I'll try not to leave things quite this long in the future.

I was overall interested to read the assigned article. As a student in the archives stream, I was largely unaware of the "Library 2.0" concept until I began studying here at UofT; the needs of archives are very different from the needs of libraries, because the dynamic between the organization and its patrons is extremely different. Regardless, I'm familiar enough with the ways that libraries operate, as oulined briefly in the article, to be able to get an impression of the very significantly different methods of offering services being suggested.

To my mind, perhaps the most interesting thing the article suggests is the possibility for integration of the library's resources into the other web resources a user might try to access. In my experience, most users looking for information on the web aren't looking explicitly for a particular resource of information when they search Google or other services; someone doesn't look for something on Google because the information is on Google itself, but because "all" information can be accessed through Google. (The fact that many users type URLs into Google seems to back this up.) More than anything else, making the library's resources accessible to the user through the same ways they look for other information takes the library's holdings out of the separate ghetto in which it exists now and brings it into the context of "global" information.

The idea of a collaborative library, which can interact with its users, is related to this last point to an extent, at least in that it also involves the use of Web 2.0 technology. A blog where libraries can openly discuss collections policies with users, or take suggestions for future holdings, seems as though it could significantly alter the way that people think about library holdings - I suspect that to many people, collections policies must seem like some sort of mysterious black box. I would have liked to hear more about this sort of an idea, even if I find it likely to be used only by the most dedicated bibliophiles. Similarly, I would have liked to read more about the ideas of how libraries could collaborate on item descriptions and the like.

I am a bit concerned the the article confuses its description of Web 2.0; two somewhat overlapping but distinct descriptions of Web 2.0 are given, once as a set of remote backend technologies accessed through flexible and combinable APIs, and later as a social technology - without a clear connection between the two. Both aspects are important to the concept of Library 2.0, but I would have appreciated a bit more of a clear definition of the interrelationship of these aspects. Similarly, it glosses over a few potential disadvantages of its suggestions, like the dangers of relying on third-party APIs and services that aren't under the library's control; the article is brief enough, however, that I don't feel it was intended as a detailed concept of Library 2.0.

Despite this somewhat unfocused impression of Library 2.0, however, I'm very intrigued by the concept and some of the ideas it brings up. The main idea of the paper seems to be to propose a range of broad ideas, not a single focused concept, so I'm interested in seeing how these ideas will be interpreted and expanded by others.