I was in London last week, giving a talk on "Library 2.0 and Scholarly Portals" at the Ingenta Publisher Forum. This is an annual London event in which Ingenta invites its publisher customers to hear about company doings and industry happenings. The event took place on the 1918 HMS President anchored on the Thames. It was definitely a first for me to hang on to the podium and shift my weight to stay balanced as I gave my talk on the gently undulating ship. I recommend this experience to all speakers, at least once.

I was the one librarian invited to speak, and this was noted by Ingenta CEO Simon Dessain as he introduced me. I pointed out to the audience that I was probably speaking more for users than for librarians, as most of my colleagues were still in the very early stages of comprehending Library 2.0 and what it can mean for library services.

Since the range of knowledge among the publishers varied widely, I began my talk with a review of Web 2.0 concepts. I then explained the phenomenon of Library 2.0 and gave examples of several service implementations. My ultimate goal was a vision of the ideal Library 2.0 scholarly portal, as outlined in my blog entry from last month.

I added a few items to since that entry, including wiki publishing (see The Coming End of Completed Publications) as well as optimizing the portal for mobile computing.

What was the reaction? I'm not really quite sure. Ingenta staff reported that my talk was well received, and publishers told me that they were interested in what I had to say. I had expected a stronger reaction, as my talk outlined not only fairly benign service enhancements (such as Ajax-enhanced title search and the creation of custom search tools and RSS feeds), but also a near total revolution in scholarly communications that would threaten publishers' time-honored models. I can't interpret the polite appreciation other than to note that this event offered explorations in a relatively short time frame and was more a forum for listening than debate. On the other hand, Simon told the audience that new revenue models would need to be found to finance the many services I described. I took this as a good sign: you will only fund something you think worthwhile.

The most heartening part of the event for me occurred earlier in the day during the talk of Melinda Kenneway. Melinda is former Marketing Director for the Journals Division of Oxford University Press and is now Director of the British consulting firm TBI Communications. Melinda spoke about new revenue opportunities for publishers, and concluded her talk with suggestions for new online service options that came right out of the Web 2.0 playbook. Melinda is both savvy and inspiring. She's a former publishing insider who told the audience that she switched careers because she would rather explore new opportunities than worriedly protect assets against change. What a great thing to say!

When I listened to Melinda, and talked to her afterwards, it occurred to me that I had never considered that consultants might be a source for change in scholarly publishing. Scholars, researchers and librarians will have their say, but the impact of consultants will also be a factor if enough publishers ask for their input.