How are graduate schools of library and information science preparing students for Library 2.0? I've got a few suggestions.

These suggestions are along the lines of what I'll call foundation skills that can prepare students for working in a Library 2.0 world. In other words, I'm not getting into lists of Library 2.0 phenomena that should be covered in school, e.g., blogs, wikis, social networks, RSS and all that. These are a given. I'm more interested in skills that are necessary for working successfully with these phenomena.

Here is my usual disclaimer: my ideas are not meant to be comprehensive, but suggestive of options and opportunities.

When students graduate from library school, they should know how to:

Manage URLs. Let's face it: links are a foundation of the Web. It follows that URL management is key to a well-run digital presence. Question: why should you include the trailing slash (/) at the end of directory URLs, e.g., http://www.microsoft.com/? If you don't know the answer to this question, your library school is failing you. You should also understand OpenURLs, DOIs, URLs with query strings, how to contstruct a vendor URL (see The URL Clearinghouse) and link resolvers. You should know about redirect URLs and when to use them. Even if you won't be involved in implementing these options, you should understand them.

Create an instructional Web page/site. Many of us nowadays are called upon to create instruction pages of some sort, for students or our colleagues. If you become an advocate for something new, be prepared to support it with high-quality online instructions.

Evaluate, select and learn new software. It's not only techies who need to do this, but just about everyone. There is LMS software, reference desk tracking software, Web analytics software, link checking software, content management software (including blogs and wikis), RSS reader software, podcast creation software, to name a very few. There is software for just about everything we want to do, and our jobs often require that we deal with something new. Learned helplessness in this area can be fatal.

Teach their colleagues. In-service training is hot. Often we are called upon to show our colleagues something new, explain concepts, train hands-on. Most of us (including myself) have started blindly, learning as we went along. There's got to be a better way.

Teach Library 2.0 technologies and services to faculty and students. Obviously. Nuff said.

Engage in assessment. This is key to initiating, supporting, developing and justifying products and services. Assessment is big in academic institutions, so library schools should prepare students for this environment.

Be an advocate and an entrepreneur. Do you want your library to move forward? It's up to you. You'll need to identify issues, evaluate and devise solutions, write proposals, pitch ideas to your supervisor, network with your colleagues, speak at meetings. You'll have to deal with failure, and also with success - be careful what you wish for, etc.

Support off-campus access. Students and faculty expect anytime, anywhere access to a library's digital resources and services. Often something fails, and often it's on the user's end. Things are complicated these days with personal firewalls, pop-up blockers, wireless networks, authentication requirements, SSL protection, proxy servers, and so on. Any of these things can prevent access. You don't have to be a techie or a public services librarian for some of these problems to be laid at your feet.

Talk to vendors. The vendor might be EBSCO, it might be Google, it might be the purveyor of a freebie service. Working actively with vendors to ask for information, report and solve problems, and suggest enhancements, helps keep things on track and improves the product or service to meet the expectations of today's students.

Contribute to support communities. If you become good at something, it's a virtue to contribue to the community that provides help and information to other users. This is especially important in the open source community, which often depends on volunteers to write documentation and contribute solutions.

I can envision course assignments for each of these items.

How do our library schools rate in terms of this list?