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| Music, media, libraries and my tortuous ascent into the middle class. |
I posted the following conference recap on the online employee newsletter we have at EBRPL.
Computers in Libraries 2007: A Conference Recap
The date for 22nd annual Computer in Libraries Conference was pushed back to April 16-18 this year so that participants might be able to enjoy spring weather and the cherry blossoms in bloom around the Arlington, VA/ Washington D.C area. But a late season nor'easter, with its eye-watering gusts, forced even hurricane hardened south Louisianians such as myself to scurry inside.
Which was just as good, since most of us were just as happy plucking away on our laptops and PDAs. After all, the theme of the conference was Beyond Library 2.0 (a play on the Web 2.0 concept), and this group probably represented the most "connected" swath of library professionals ever brought into a single room. I haven't been to a conference in about a year or two, but it seemed a good percentage of attendees, maybe 1 in 6 were taking notes on a laptop. Some were even blogging about the presentations in real time. And it seemed every presenter not only had a book about Web 2.0 and the library, but also an associated blog, a MySpace or Facebook page, a flickr page, a wiki, a YouTube page, and a website.
With a record 2393 in attendance, even many of the overflow rooms, with patched-in audio and video, were overflowing. This shows the level of enthusiasm for applying Web 2.0 concepts to the library world. Luckily many presenters explained and defined Web 2.0 for those of us who sometimes feel like a speed bump on the information superhighway.
Generally, Web 2.0 describes a second generation of web applications that include weblogs, wikis, podcasting, social networking sites, social bookmarking, tagging, RSS feeds, and other web services. Applications are moving from being centered on the desktop and the individual user, and toward web based services that harness interactivity among groups. For example, wikis (the most famous example being Wikipedia) allow many different users to collectively create and edit content.
Well how does this affect libraries? Lee Rainie, of the Pew Internet and American Life Project, noted that 70% of households have internet access. Among teenagers, 50% have gone online in a library (this figure has recently doubled). 44% of teens who are online use Wikipedia. Among our many challenges, librarians need to be able to show our users how to:
Princeton Public made a wiki for patrons to post book reviews. Librarians have collaborated on a best practices wiki. And of course, the Computers in Libraries had its own conference wiki. Chad Boeninger has used a wiki for a subject guide: The Biz Wiki and, along with video and webcasts, for library instruction. Michelle Meredith has used blogs and wikis to teach library staff about Web 2.0 applications (Five Weeks to a Social Library).
Tim Spalding, creator of Library Thing (which is especially cool), and Roy Tennant talked about the future of library catalogs. Tagging and tag clouds(here's an example from the University of Pennsylvania), folksonomy, disaggregation of content, and allowing users access to catalog data are among the trends they see in future library catalogs.
Some cutting edge libraries are even using gaming to provide library instruction, such as the Fletcher Library Game Project. Some libraries even have a presence in Second Life. You say you can't wait for our library to start implementing Web 2.0 projects? Well Library Lagniappe (the online emplyee newsletter for EBRPL0 is a blog powered by Blogger.com. Also, check out the MySpace page for EBRPL's All That's Jazz program, and add it as a friend! And have you checked out our downloadable E-audio books from Netlibrary? These projects may be just the beginning of an emerging Library 2.0 here in East Baton Rouge Parish.
Posted by Mike Waugh at May 9, 2007 10:00 PM