Library 2.0 Initiatives in Academic Libraries has just been published by ACRL. This is the hybrid book/wiki publication that I've been editing for the past year.

You can buy the book online at the ALA Store.

Here's the official blurb.

I'm pleased about this publication for several reasons.

First of all, it's finished, always a good feeling for an author or editor.

Second, and even better, it's not finished at all because of the post-publication wiki. What I like best about this wiki - and the entire hybrid setup - is the fact that the publisher itself is hosting it. This is not something I had to go out and do on my own, a more typical model for those of us who want to carry on the lives of our books online. The wiki was a crucial aspect of my initial negotiations with the amazing Kathryn Deiss, Content Strategist at ACRL, who approached me about editing the book. Kathryn's excitement about the idea says so much about her and her vision. And score one for ACRL, and ALA too, for trying this model. Because of the nature of the topic, I doubt I would have agreed to edit a book of case studies about Library 2.0 projects. While snapshot chapters had the potential to be useful, it didn't make a lot of sense to stop there. We're in the early days of both Library 2.0 as well as these initiatives. Things will evolve. It will be interesting and worthwhile to track what happens. And speaking of evolving, it will also be interesting to see how the authors choose to use the wiki to present their updates.

Besides, some of you already know how I feel about the nature of completed publications.

Also, I think these cases show a seriousness of purpose, intellectual effort, institutional commitment, and applied creativity that are all hallmarks of the best of Library 2.0.

Finally, there's impressive work going on out there, and we need to know about it. Many of these projects will be new to readers, all to the good. This publication highlights a variety of successful strategies, goals, and scales of operation. There are many roads forward, and I think it helps to see this.

The wiki is just getting underway. Each page has an RSS feed for tracking updates, as does the entire wiki. Select the chapter(s) that interest you, subscribe to the feed, and watch the content come in.

Chapter 1: Discovering Places to Serve Patrons in the Long Tail

Patrick Griffis, Kristin Costello, Darcy Del Bosque, Cory Lampert, and Eva Stowers,
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Chapter 2: Chat, Commons, and Collaboration: Inadvertently Library 2.0 in Western Australia

Kathryn Greenhill, Margaret Jones, and Jean McKay, Murdoch University Library

Chapter 3: Yale: Taking the Library to Users in the Online University Environment

Kalee Sprague and Roy Lechich, Yale University

Chapter 4: Delivering Targeted Library Resources into a Blackboard Framework

Richard Cox, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Chapter 5: Adapting an Open Source, Scholarly Web 2.0 System for Findability in Library Collections

Bethany Nowviskie, Elizabeth Sadler, and Erik Hatcher, University of Virginia

Chapter 6: Push and Pull of the OPAC

Daniel Forsman, Jönköping University Library, Sweden

Chapter 7: UThink: Library Hosted Blogs for a University-Wide Community

Shane Nakerud, University of Minnesota

Chapter 8: Discussing Student Engagement: An Information Literacy Course Blog

Gregory Bobish, University at Albany, State University of New York

Chapter 9: Building Library 2.0 into Information Literacy: A Case Study

Susan Sharpless Smith, Erik Mitchell, and Caroline Numbers, Wake Forest University

Chapter 10: IMplementing IM @ Reference: The GW Experience

Deborah B. Gaspar and Sarah Palacios Wilhelm, The George Washington University

Chapter 11: Taking the Library to Users: Experimenting with Facebook as an Outreach Tool

Dawn Lawson, New York University

Chapter 12: YouTube University: Using XML, Web Services, and Online Video Services to Serve University and Library Video Content

Jason A. Clark, Montana State University