A couple of recent writings have caught my eye, and for the same reason. They feature both wisdom and misapprehensions. The wisdom impresses me, and the misapprehensions concern me. One of these writings is a blog posting, the other is...
OCLC has been making some interesting moves lately. Last spring, Roy Tennant became a Senior Program Manager with the RLG Programs unit of OCLC Research and Programs. Andrew Pace is on his way to becoming OCLC's Executive Director for Networked...
Let's begin with a brief quiz. Last summer, the management of my university's dorm network was outsourced to a third party ISP. This has placed the dorms outside of the university's IP address range. For the first time ever, more...
I've been imagining the ideal 2.0 library. This would be one that (briefly stated) has determined to forge ahead in a way that works for that library, its local conditions, and its staff. I'm sure we've all noticed that many...
OCLC recently released a report, Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World. The report focuses on use of the social Web and related concerns about information privacy. Over 6,000 users in six countries and 382 U.S. library directors were...
I was hired by my library a dozen years ago to edit the library's Web site. This was back when the Web was just a couple of years old and Web sites were something new. Being an entrepreneur was expected...
Over the years, I've watched bright and promising techies from my library's Systems department leave for greener pastures. By "bright and promising," I mean those who are innovative, creative, forward-thinking, and productive. How do you keep such people? Can you?...
I lead a charmed life. Most days, I bring my homemade lunch to work and eat at my desk while catching up on my professional reading. Yesterday, I was reading the October 15 issue of Information Week and an article...
Last month, we received the report from our consultants. The report was based on two days of visits at the end of July. I refered to the consultants' visit in my post on Talking to Consultants. The main thing my...
I've spent many hours over the past few days creating a tutorial for my colleagues on importing RSS feeds into a Web page. No, this is not a tutorial on how to use a remote service such as RSS-To-Javascript. Those...
I've been invited to keynote at the first annual conference of the SUNY Library Software Users Group (LiSUG) on Friday. I've been asked to talk about the future of libraries and how 2.0 can shape this future. It's always fun...
Labels, labels, labels. This morning, I had planned to write about something that happened at my library a couple of days ago, but first I went through my RSS feeds. I found Michelle Boule's We Got 2.0 Librarians, Not 2.0...
This is my 100th blog entry. It seems like a good time to share a couple of things that have heartened me about the growing interest in Library 2.0. Last week I received an e-mail message from a media center...
Yesterday, I was invited to speak to a group of middle managers in my library about possible planning for and implementation of 2.0 initiatives. We took a look at my Action Plan for a 2.0 Library as a point of...
Right from the start, there has been a reason why I've maintained a blog about Library 2.0 from the perspective of an academic librarian. Over the months of blogging, and reading other librarian blogs, I've learned a lot about attitudes...
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...
Last week, our Dean brought in two consultants to interview library staff with the ultimate goal of recommending changes in our organization. Specifically, the stated goal of the consultants was this: "How can our organizational structure be adapted to better...
How do you keep up your skills? How do you ensure that you're on top of your game to best serve your users? There's all sorts of advice out there about how to keep up. Sometimes you need to learn...
Years ago, I co-authored an article with a colleague at a library in a different state. I was very impressed that librarians at her institution were allowed to take an at-home research day on a regular basis. This appealed to...
Conducting a search for a new staff member is a challenge. We all know this. I'll bet that nearly everyone reading this posting has served on a search committee at one time or another. You know the score: distributing the...
Tyler Rousseau, over at the Library Garden blog, posted an entry yesterday, Librarian 2.0 - The new professional or the responsible one? In this post, he reacts to my Librarian's 2.0 Manifesto by calling it "both an inspring and a...
I love the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. No, not the TV series, but the books themselves. I've read them so often and for so many years that I can quote passages from memory. When I open one...
I'm in the mood for a little fun today. Lately, my library's Systems Administrator has been correcting my pronunciation of "Library 2.0." Fred Jeziorkowski is also a friend, and he enjoys telling me when I'm wrong. A little while ago,...
One of the strengths of the library profession is that we are not one size fits all. Even within particular classes of libraries, there is significant variation in what we can choose to do. There are local imperatives. Each institution...
Should a candidate for a professional library position demonstrate knowledge of Library 2.0 in order to be viable? Should this be a litmus test? As I've been observing interviews at my library in recent months, this question has been on...
Next week, I'll be giving the wrap-up talk at the spring conference of the Eastern New York Chapter of the Association of College & Research Libraries (ENY/ACRL). The theme of the conference is "Who's Driving the Technology Bus?" Apparently the...
I don't blog too prominently about my library. I've been steering this blog in more conceptual directions, while sometimes using my library as an example to illustrate my points. But today, I think I'll come down out of the clouds....
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...
We all know the importance of radical trust as a component of Library 2.0. Most of the discussion I've seen about this concept relates to the radical trust of library users. I've discussed this, myself. But what about radical trust...
I've been pondering the Top Ten Assumptions for the future of academic and research libraries released about a month ago by the ACRL Research Committee. On reading it, my reaction was, Is that all? I was hoping for something more...
The other day, I wrote an entry about concepts of Web 3.0. In it, I mentioned that "...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...
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'...
Now that I've finished praising the basic approach of the ACRL document Changing Roles of Academic and Research Libraries, it's time to express my concern about one of its ideas. The first of the three "essential actions" recommended in this...
One of the notable tenets of the Library 2.0 philosophy is the centrality of the user. Library 2.0 reaffirms the library as a user-centered enterprise, and then looks for ways to incorporate users' information culture into the culture of the...
I ran across a reference the other day to the matter of tenure, and it raised questions in my mind about certain received ideas about this phenomenon. I realize that the issue of tenure is a controversial one, and I'm...
The anonymous Annoyed Librarian has turned her sharp gaze on a couple of my blog postings, most recently in her post From Your Crusty Colleagues. This was a response to my entry about collegiality. It was a fun read, though...
A couple of months ago, I mentioned that my dean asked me to give him a list of recommended Library 2.0-related projects when my sabbatical ends. I also noted that this blog began as a project to help me write...
From my first days on the job as an academic librarian a dozen years ago, I've heard the word "collegial" expressed routinely, and in tones of high respect. If you're known as collegial, you've generally got it made. It's an...
Here's a coincidence. Over the past couple of days, I've been mulling over the role of standards in our profession and coming to the conclusion that a) existing ACRL standards are inadequate, b) toothless standards are not standards at all,...
In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, I told the story of The Psychosocial Parameters of Internet Addiction, the bogus site I created ten years ago with a colleague to teach users to evaluate information found on the...
I've been thinking about Sarah Clark's posting The Dark Side of Library 2.0, Part 1: It's the Patron, Stupid!" over at The Scattered Librarian. I attempted to leave a comment, but for some reason it wouldn't post, and I saw...
You've had a few days to ponder questions I posed in Part 1 about the site Psychosocial Parameters of Internet Addiction. Being the savvy librarians and information professionals that you are, and naturally surpicious of my leading questions, you've surely...
Web 2.0 - and by extension, its progeny Library 2.0 - assumes that users know that they're doing. They can create content, edit content, upload and share content, vote, rate and rank content, classify content, and comment on content. The...
I was very pleased to see Karen Coomb's article in the January issue of Information Today, "Building a Library Web Site on the Pillars of Web 2.0." Karen describes her work at the University of Houston Libraries to revamp the...
I've been thinking about the various barriers that inhibit academic libraries from launching into the 2.0 world. I've read plenty of articles and blog postings about this, as we all probably have done. We could all make lists of the...
My dean has asked me to give him a list of recommended Library 2.0-related projects when my sabbatical ends in March. He deserves kudos for suggesting such a thing. It's a hopeful sign when your dean makes such a request....
A lot has been said about the importance of libraries in offering the human factor. We're not just empty search boxes or impersonal Web sites. We provide services with knowledgeable people you can talk to, explore a question with, look...
My library just got a huge, anonymous donation to fund ten new positions for as long as we want them. We're now in the process of figuring out the basics of these new lines. It's an exciting time for us....
Institutional transformation can only happen when positions are restructured. We need to define new responsibilities that target new goals if we have any hope of bringing about major change. I've heard librarians complain for years about increased workload. While new,...
There are many strategies we might choose for starting on the path toward transforming ourselves into 2.0 institutions. I suggest kicking off a pledge for transformation with a day-long retreat. By retreat, I mean reserving a day in the library...
Should academic libraries, as increasingly technology-based institutions, require that its administrators have a baseline of hands-on technical skills? It's an idea worth considering. I was just reviewing a list of preferred skills for ARL library directors included in the 2001...
Tech support is a key to our future. Our role in tech support has evolved slowly but surely as our operations have moved online. It's sneaked up on us and now it's a part of our (often unstated) mission. I...
I'm still thinking about committees and about how we can involve students in library operations. Now that I've got students functioning as Wal-Mart greeters and roving helpers, how about putting them on some of our committees? Now, a part of...
The title of this entry says it all. We librarians have plenty to say about the over-abundance of committees in our lives. If I were really clever, I'd make up some new jokes. I'll never forget hearing Shane Nackerud speak...
I will recognize that the universe of information culture is changing fast and that libraries need to respond positively to these changes to provide resources and services that users need and want. I will educate myself about the information...
Lately I've been configuring a trial installation of MediaWiki and Movable Type using a shared instance of MySQL on a Windows server. I'm happy to say that I've got everything up and running. I expected this experiment to be learning...
At the ALA Annual Conference in New Orleans last spring, I was talking with a friend who works in an academic library in California, and she was enumerating the things her library needed to enhance its Web presence. Her list...
How are graduate schools of library and information science preparing students for Library 2.0? I've got a few suggestions. These suggestions are along the lines of what I'll call foundation skills that can prepare students for working in a Library...
The concept of the long tail raises interesting questions as we work our way into Library 2.0. Coined by Chris Anderson and described in his 2004 article in Wired magazine, this concept exploits the phenomenon of a statistical distribution in...
Library 2.0 depends on an active collaboration between librarians and users. This means expending effort, on both sides, in ways that are mostly untried in the academic library world. For example, we're expecting users who enthusiastically participate in social networking...
Collaboration. Community. Radical Trust. Assessment. These are a few of the buzzwords fueling Library 2.0. In order for them to take on meaning, we need to work actively with our constituencies to find out what they need and how they...
Library 2.0 turns the role of academic librarians on its head. In the Library 2.0 world view, user needs, preferences, practices, comfort zones, interests and skills in their handling of information converge to drive library services. Their participation in the...
Users are at the center of Library 2.0, and assessment is the key to finding out what they want. If users are going to do all the things predicted by the Library 2.0 world view - participate in the creation...
What is Library 2.0, and what is its significance for academic libraries? So many words have been spilled on the topic of Library 2.0. A fair amount of the literature is coming from public librarians, with a growing literature from...