Don't panic. I realize that my blog is nominally about Library 2.0. However, one of the most important tenets of Library 2.0 is the one that transcends Library 2.0. I'm referring to the notion that libraries evolve as our users' information culture evolves in order to meet users' changing needs. To me, this timeless adaptability is the essence of Library 2.0. In other words, Library 2.0 does not begin and end with the 2.0 phenomenon. If it did, it would date itself pretty fast.

So, it's interesting to speculate about impetus for the next phase, usually referred to as Web 3.0. (By the way, I find it interesting that the wider world does not dispute the reality of Web 2.0, whereas some librarians debate whether Library 2.0 exists.) There are already numerous writings out there that refer to Web 3.0. One of them caught my eye because it was whimsical, a bit strange, and also food for thought.

Talk of Web 3.0 often intersects with ruminations about the semantic Web. The blog posting I read yesterday did this, up to a point, but with a few twists.

The editors of the Read/WriteWeb blog held a contest to define Web 3.0. The three winners would win tickets to the Web 2.0 Expo in San Fransicso next week. The winners were just announced. In brief, here were the winning definitions:

1. The Humorous definition winner: "Web 3.0 will complete my sentences."

2. The Serious definition winner: "Web 3.0 – a decentralized asynchronous me."

3. The Editor's Choice winner: "Warning: This comment is BETA."

The Humorous definition would be pretty cool for scholarship. If our sentences were completed for us, the research process would be so much easier. Just think of it! As long as the completed sentences are accompanied by valid citations, this will prove to be extremely popular. It will certainly change the face of reference services. This definition gets my vote.

The Editor's Choice struck me as odd. In a nutshell, this defintion contends that realtime video is the essence of Web 3.0. "Web 3.0 to me is video-driven social networking, video-driven news blogs and user created entertainment, and video-driven email..."

How would this benefit libraries? If pretty much everything were under video surveillance - er, I mean, were a part of the real-time experience of Web 3.0 - I can envision both significant and trivial applications. We librarians could provide better services remotely with realtime video. This would surely be an improvement over IM, e-mail and the phone. It would be routine, rather than something special, to tune in to information literacy classes and the library's special events. Social scholarship could be enhanced with video collaborations. With real-time video, students could check out the group study area to see if their assignment partners had showed up, or look at the information commons area to see if there are any seats left. I'm not sure how access to collections is enhanced by this scenario, but I'll keep thinking about it.

The Serious definition is the one most worth paying attention to. Keep in mind that the ReadWriteWeb blog is interested in the business side of things, not libraries or research. So its readers have the business world in mind. This becomes clear when you read the entire Serious definition. However, it's not too hard to find ideas that apply to us. The Serious definition asserts that Web 3.0 is "about me when I don’t want to participate in the world. It’s about me when I want to have more control of my environment particularly who I let in. When my attention is stretched who/what do I pay attention to and who do I let pay attention to me. It is more effective communication for me!"

This definition describes a scenario in which you can customize your environment to keep out what you want to avoid and let in the rest. In such a world, "agents monitor, discover, filter and direct flows of information for me to the devices and front-ends that I use". Nice. This seems to be describing a way of personalizing what we searchers think of as precision, as opposed to recall.

For this to be truly a generational advance, 3.0 agents would need to be very sophisticated. For example, it's not enough to subscribe to an RSS feed and direct it your device of choice. Speaking personally, I'm utterly bored by blog postings about someone's personal life or achievements. Unfortunately, a number of blogs that also cover professional topics of interest also cover the personal stuff I want to avoid. With good metadata on the source end, and sophisticated customization and learning on the agent end, I might ultimately get the filtered RSS content that I want. Although this is a trivial example, the benefits of such a scenario to researchers is obvious. Who wouldn't want the most finely-tuned precision ever achieved? This would be especially valuable when so much information competes for our attention, exists in so many disparate places, and is mixed in with content we don't want to see.

Who knows, this 3.0 scenario might even help us avoid the bandwagon blues.