Is there a difference between using social software tools in one's social life and using them in one's professional life? The tools are often the same, and the lines are blurring. This is one of the most fascinating aspects of Web 2.0.

Next month, in Boston, the Enterprise 2.0 conference will take place. This will be "the conference for IT and business professionals driving towards more creative, agile and productive companies through the exploration and adoption of collaborative tools and technologies." Substitute the words librarians and libraries, and we've got ourselves a deal. Some of the sessions could take place in a library conference: "Intro to Social Computing." "New Social Tools for the Enterprise." The latter will cover blogs, wikis, tags, mashups and social project management. Sounds familiar.

The justification usually given for incorporating Web 2.0 practices into academic libraries is its value as a strategy for meeting students' needs and expectations. According to this notion, the library's offering of 2.0 services will attract students. When students see the same types of opportunities for participation that they enjoy in their social environment, they will join with us by tagging, commenting, sharing, editing, etc., in the library context. Ultimately, this active participation enhances our pedagogical efforts.

For my part, I've also emphasized the notion that we need to train students to become social scholars. This is justified because, simply, scholarship is becoming social. Our students need to learn to use social tools in a scholarly way because this is defining the nature of scholarship.

These are fine rationales for developing a 2.0 library. But I'm also thinking about the professional world that's evolving out there. Maybe this is implied in these other rationales. I want to make it explicit.

Take this Enterprise 2.0 conference. It's telling us something about the real world, that is, the professional world beyond academia. (I'll admit that academia has its own, special reality!) It's indicative of what we already know: that businesses are experimenting with 2.0 tools, just as we are. This will impact our graduates. We have a business school at my university. Many of our graduates, including those with other majors, will end out working in the business world. These former students will need to be familiar with the tools of this culture in order to be effective employees. Increasingly, these are 2.0 tools. Our graduates will need to be facile - in a professional way - with online project collaboration, wiki editing, file sharing, mashing up, manipulating data, and all the rest of it.

Of course, it's not only businesses that are moving into the 2.0 world and will affect our graduates. We all can cite other examples.

What I'm saying is this: we often rationalize our 2.0 strategies by declaring that we're attracting students to use the library by giving them the tools of their trade. I want to add a rationale that comes down to something more traditional: we're training students for their lives after graduation. The professional world is turning toward 2.0. This fact makes an even more compelling case for us.