I heard with interest the recently recorded remarks by Google's CEO Eric Schmidt, who was asked to define Web 3.0 at the Seoul Digital Forum.

Of course, any definition by a public figure is bound to generate comment. Hey, even those of us who aren't very public can come in for a drubbing when we try! Schmidt - wearing his developer's hat - began by defining Web 2.0 as based on Ajax. I'll admit to surprise (to put it mildly) that a developer - no less the Google CEO - could limit his definition of Web 2.0 to Ajax. I suppose he could, since he also stated that Web 2.0 is nothing more than a marketing term - obviously with Ajax characteristics! So much for Google's vision, at least as articulated by its CEO.

More interesting was Schmidt's definition of Web 3.0. He sees this forthcoming phenomena as lightweight "applications that are pieced together," can run on any device, are fast and customizable, and are distributed virally via e-mail, social networks, and so on. He remarked that you won't go to the store and buy them. A summary and video of his remarks are available on the blog Read/Write Web.

If I'm understanding Schmidt correctly, the lightweight applications of the 3.0 world will be interoperable, open and free. In my view, this vision is on the right track.

I'm sure that free is something of a relative concept to Schmidt, since Google won't survive if everything in the 3.0 world is open source and not tied in with advertising. Be that as it may!

The comments on the Read/Write Web blog about Schmidt's remarks are an interesting read. My favorite commenter definition - in this case of Web 4.0! - is this: Open Source Everything, Open Data / Transparency between the user and site.

If I apply this idea to the nature of social networking sites, I see something hopeful and exciting. To me, this is the scenario in which we librarians stand a fighting chance of serving users in social networking spaces.

I've been contemplating all this as I've been thinking about the splintering of the 2.0 world into many proprietary, dot-com applications. Yes, we've got a strengthening open source movement, but open source sites are not ones where students are flocking for their social networking. It's not so much the bandwagon blues that are getting to me, but the closed nature of some of the most popular destinations in the 2.0 world. These fenced-in services are barriers to us.

Let me use Facebook as an example.

It's a worrisome thought that Facebook might become an increasingly popular destination for students. To me, Facebook is a partly cool, partly clunky Web space for staying in touch with friends. It's becoming more functional in that it's opened its API to developers, but this API is proprietary. If, for example, you want to offer a catalog search for your Facebook users, you've got to create a proprietary widget. There is a growing number of useful Facebook widgets for libraries, and surely more are on the way.

This is all well and good. But once Facebook is history - and someday it will be - widgets for The Next Wonderful Proprietary Social Networking Space will need to be written all over again.

Forgive me for projecting into the future, but this scenario just doesn't scale. And isn't scalability a smart technology strategy?

I believe in the 2.0 principle that academic librarians need to go out into the spaces where our users congregate to practice our profession. No, not to bother students if they don't want to be bothered, but to be there for them if they need and want us. If we are limited in our abilities to give students this option, the profession of librarianship will suffer.

Attempting to reach students within proprietary spaces can be hell. It's been known for quite a while that Facebook has put up barriers to library outreach. Library profiles have been banned. Extreme and varying limits have been placed on using messages for outreach. The ACRL book I'm editing will include a fascinating chapter by a bibliographer who had to twist herself into a pretzel in order to send messages to majors in her field to offer her services. She ultimately succeeded, and achieved her goal of being useful to students within Facebook. Should I be sympathetic that Facebook is attempting to prevent message bombs? No, not if its administrators insist on treating all messages from individual members the same, no matter what their purpose.

I'm not sure what, exactly, to call this, but it isn't social networking. Or rather, it's an odd definition of it.

The Library 2.0 vision of taking the library to users - in external spaces - won't survive this type of proprietary, rule-based space run by faceless adminstrators. 2.0 is not heaven. I'm hoping that, eventually, dot-coms will find a way to join the inevitable trend toward an open Web.

If not, we'll need alternatives. This is one reason why I envision, and hope, that someday campuses will sponsor social spaces for their communities, interoperable ones that can interact with other campus spaces across the country and the world. In these spaces, there can be plenty of social activities, great widgets and functionalities, and also academic help that is welcomed when needed.

I doubt that all of our students will find this attractive. Many of them would rather hang out on external spaces where they can be free to, well, express themselves without campus oversight. I can understand this. In other words, there are no easy answers.

Open Source Everything, Open Data / Transparency between the user and site. This is an amazing vision. It leads to all sorts of imaginative leaps about other things that impact our professional practice. Think about it.