Web 2.0 and me (and libraries)

hen I was prompted to tell why I am working on 23 Things it took me a minute to come up with an answer. These are things that I am exposed to already, I use many of these tools and feel comfortable with many of them. I know circulation is required to work on this, and that I have to do the 9 that were chose, but I wanted to do them, and have a reason for working on them. I want circulation to have better communication, I feel that we could benefit greatly from a shared, collaborative space. I undertook work on our part of the wiki, but quickly realized that without anyone else contributing, I was making it more for my self then anything.

By doing the 23 Things, I want to know, and be at, the same level as my co-workers. If we all start in the same place, this "survival in web2.0 world" training, my co-workers and I might not be so lost with a new communication medium. We might even use it, if we got into the habit. I looking forward to the day when I can have a idea or a question, post it, and get feedback and collaboration on it, with out the need for a committee to meet and survey and get back to us.

I use "web 2.0" tools every day. There a large part of how I get things done, and how I spend my free time. I've got a facebook, I use flickr to share photos. I collaborate on a wiki to do my group projects in school, I always promise to my self to learn yahoo pipes. I put my data on the cloud, I share and keep my bookmarks on del.icio.us. I'm going to school for a field that has this as it's bread and butter. I live, and often work in, a web 2.0 environment.

For this blog post, we were asked to first read 3 articles, and watch a video. The articles* dealt with the changing face of the traditional library. They all pointed to the onslaught of information available for free and at home and asked "What are we going to do about this? How will we stay relevant?" I think that the answer is in looking at what a library is and maybe what a librarian does. To me, one of the things at the core of librarianship, is a librarian organizing and presenting data, information, in a clear, logical way. The internet, and all the information that comes with it, won't change this.

All of that information need people to help organize it and get it too people. Too often I look only to the first dozen hits on a search engine, if even that far, and make a choice of where to go from there. Nine billion hits never helps me. And increasingly, these hits, the results, are the same few websites over many broad categories. Wikipedia, Digg, Amazon, all of these seem to be near the top of all but the most precise searches. With the tunnel vision that occurs, I often don't leave my safety zone online. Lot's of amazing information is out there, everything exists online, but I don't know if I have the tools to find it.

We have a need! This is what libraries need to respond to! In the flood of information online, finding what your looking for can be impossible with the web giants blocking your view. Library 2.0 is about responding to the needs of the community, and librarians are about organizing and presenting information. There's a lot things that need to be categorized.



*I could only read 2 of them, the PDF reader wasn't playing nice in the lab.