Library 2.0

It's one thing to keep up to date and not let our users leave us in the dust. It's another to puff up our sense of self-importance with fluffy, lofty rhetoric. Much of what I read about Library 2.0 left me with a "blah, blah, blah" impression. Some I wanted to say "DUH" to, and some I outright disagreed with. The one I thought had the most genuine substance was the one about icebergs, but I disagreed with much of it. A few comments thereon:

No just in case collection huh? Guess those Seattle folks are out of luck, as are the students with a book report due tomorrow, or those who have relied on Web resources and left their required book sources to the last minute. If the day comes when teachers no longer require print resources, and patrons no longer want to savor the sensory experience of reading a paper source, maybe. But I don't see that happening anytime soon.

NO user ed? Many patrons can't even sign up for an e-mail account without help. And if users are relying more on web sources and less on print, education about how to evaluate reliability of sources becomes important. Further, although I think self explanatory interfaces that need no instruction are important to strive towards, I doubt such a beast exists or is even possible. Different learning styles... The ability to overlook something staring you right in the face... Difficulty coming up with labels that are transparent and mean the same thing to everyone... One thing I think would help greatly would be more uniformity across sites and databases (in layout, appearance, labeling, results structure, help functions, etc. etc.) so that what is learned about one could be expected to directly transfer to most others. This is much more the case today than it was yesterday, but there is still along way to go. Staff frustration with some of the sites introduced through Learning 2.0 is just one case in point.

Don't come to us? Well, we certainly can take services to our patrons by way of the Web, and things like ABC express or TLC. But I don't believe the day will ever come when a virtually library can fully replace the functions offered by a physical place and collection.

Of what I read in the other articles, the thing that caught my attention the most was the idea of broadening relevance ranking. This sounds like it would be both beneficial and doable.