Take 2 Web 2.0

After attending Reality 2.0 on September 12th at Deakin University and listening to Stephen Abram of Stephen's Lighthouse fame (Blog) and Sue Owen speaking on sustainability 2.0 and the Deakin experience, I have been inspired to revisit the web 2.o experience of 2007 and build on it.

Anyone interested in Evidence based practice in evaluating libraries may be interested in the following blog at http://librariesusingevidence.blogspot.com

The web 2.0 philosophy seems to have taken root in our library psych and now one of our roles appears to be evaluating its applications. Google seems to dominate this domain and our library customers may get their introduction to web 2.0 through google applications, they need not be limited to google. It is a large task to keep abreast of available applications and their value, strengths and weaknesses, but possibly this is one of our tasks.

This seminar strengthened my view that we must constantly evolve to survive and also to enhance our customers learning experience. We must treat customers as individuals and make them feel part of the library community and a joint learning experience.

# 23 Just the beginning

It is time to evaluate our findings, collaborate and collectively decide how the web 2.0 tools can best serve our purpose in the field of library and information practice.
There is an interesting article in Incite, vol. 28 Issue 11, Nov 2007. p39 "EBLIP and Library 2.0- Friend or Foe comparing the two ends of the spectrum in library innovation." EBLIP stands for Evidence based library and information practice.
These are apparently the two major trends in library practice at present, so we owe it to ourselves to consider both. Papers on the later concept may be viewed at :

http://www.eblip4.unc.edu/


So much to read... so much to think about ... so much to do

This is just the beginning.

# 22 Audiobooks

NetLibrary looks really useful providing high quality e Audiobooks for libraries. It's a must I would say, for public libraries with no fines and no overdues. I have downloaded a number of audio books from itunes at home, for which I paid dearly for the priviledge. In fact, I listened to Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan just recently, to check the functionality, quality and desirability of a book in this format. It was Ian McEwan reading the story himself and well worth the experiment. EBooks also appeal to me, although I have yet to access one from an ipod. I have listened to parts of books from the computer terminal but I can't sit still long enough to gain any great benefit using this method. These are all services I feel the library must supply in the near future.

# 21 Podcasts

I'm addicted to podcasts, I listen to them on the way to work, while walking, riding my exercise bike and cooking the dinner. The book show, The movie show, Denton, arts programs and even State library of Victoria conferences. My ipod connects in my car so I can have it with me always. In a library context I can imagine that user education could be produced in this format. It would be excellent if the customers could access podcasts from the public pcs. I'm planning to investigate some of the directories from home as at present I predominantly rely on itunes.

# 20 Youtube

I suppose this technology could be used for user education but I'm not sure what other use it could be internally for libraries. It would be wonderful to give the public access to it in our libraries. At home I was pleased to be able to watch my son playing guitar on a video via Youtube and many videos of varying quality that my sons have become attached to.

#19 web 2.0 tools

There are just so many web awards that I couldn't chose one.
My favourites are http://www.biblio.com/ used to search for out of print books,
www.docs.google.com/a/ a fabulous communication and collaboration tool including docs.google.com, and http://del.icio.us/ which I am still trying to tame.

I was particularly interested in John Riemer's comment in "To better bibliographic services", that the features of Amazon and Google, which are of interest to customers "ought to be incorporated into the services of libraries" and that the "options libraries present their users should extend beyond the options managed and under the control of individual institutions"

The web awards give many technological ideas to be considered when planning for the future of library services and how we can change our mindset to incorporate the web 2.0 technologies to benefit our customers and ourselves.

# 18 online productivity

Online productivity is such a useful concept and I don't mind undermining Microsoft at the same time, their monopoly is unethical in my humble opinion. I created a document in Zoho Writer as suggested but on discovering Google docs, I developed some real enthusiasm for the concept. I shall investigate Google docs in some depth at home. There just isn't the available time to look at anything of real interest at work.