The Looking Glass

At the risk of being burnt at the stake for heresy, I have to confess that I found some comfort in John Blyberg’s blog post Library 2.0 Debased. John is the the Head of Technology and Digital Initiatives at Darien Library in Connecticut and says:

I’ve been feeling, for awhile now, that the term Library 2.0 has been co-opted by a growing group of libraries, librarians, and particularly vendors to push an agenda of “change” that deflects attention from some very real issues and concerns without really changing anything. It’s very evident in the profusity of L2-centric workshops and conferences that there is a significant snake-oil market in the bibliosphere. We’re blindly casting about for a panacea and it’s making us look like fools…

Luckily, Web 2.0 as a whole exists in a large, rather well-insulated economy that will adjust over time. Libraries, on the other hand, are significantly more delicate ecosystems that require more care and discretion. Specifically, we need to understand how our internal information ecology works and how to tend to it. How and where we interface with our users is where the rubber meets the road and should merit a little more thought then simply thrusting a MySpace page in their face or building a new library in Second Life–a service our users overwhelmingly do not use and, which seems to me, like a creepy post-apocalyptic wasteland. I’ll even turn the tables on myself and admit that I was wrong about local tagging in the OPAC. SOPAC was by-and-large a success, but its use of user-contributed tags is a failure. For the past nine months, the top ten tags have included “fantasy”, “manga”, “anime”, “time travel”, “shonen”, “shonen jump”, and “shape-changing”. As a one-time resident of Ann Arbor, I can assure you that these are not topics that dominated the collective hive mind.

Says Blyberg, the strictly controlled traditional library environment is not naturally suited to the user-driven nature of Web2.0.  Therefore, we have to do more than change the way we operate at the interface with our users. He continues:

So we need to understand that, while it’s alright to tip the balance and fail occasionally, we’re more likely to do so if we’re arbitrarily introducing technology that isn’t properly integrated into our overarching information framework. Of course, that means we have to have a working framework to begin with that compliments and adheres to our tradition of solid, proven librarianship. In other words, when we use technology, it should be transparent, intuitive, and a natural extension of the patron experience. If it can’t be transparent, then it should be so overwhelmingly beneficial to the user that it is canonized not by the techies, but the users themselves…

The true pursuit of Library 2.0 involves a thorough recalibration of process, policy, physical spaces, staffing, and technology so that any hand-offs in the patron’s library experience are truly seamless.

 So someone has finally said it and he’s not alone. Michael Stephens at ALATechSource provides further support. It makes sense though -  changes that aren’t based on reimagined core values just won’t work AND won’t last.

Image by Hugh Macleod