[Web4lib] Skills for Library 2.0 Leaders

[Patricia F Anderson]

I agree very much that this is a great discussion! I restrained myself 
from leaping in right away so that I could hear some other ideas and 
perceptions.

I am speaking as someone who has spent much of my career in mid-curve -- 
eyes forward, and hands reaching back to bring others along. I am 
functioning kind of as an emerging technologies librarian, however I know 
perfectly well that there are many others who are farther out on the edge 
than I am.

Initially, when the phrase "Web 2.0" first came out, I revolted against 
it. You see, I remember the beginning of the web, and my grad school 
mentor, Manfred Kochen, was one of the people who predicted its coming and 
fought for it throughout much of his career. The whole concept of "Web 
2.0" seemed to me to simply be saying that we are now closer to reaching 
the original goals of creating the web in the first place! I didn't get 
why we suddenly started saying that, oh, this was different or cooler, 
when actually we are still bootstrapping ourselves along to goal #1 -- 
empowering the little.

Now, as someone who is embedded in a Web 2.0 environment, teaching Web 2.0 
tools, techniques, methodologies and resources, I have grudgingly and 
later wonderingly come to realize this is indeed a Sea Change. I now find 
that normal databases (like Pubmed) and normal search engines (like Google 
/ Yahoo) seem flat to me. They're missing something, something that has 
become intertwined with my current mental models of search.

I use PubMed, and get as cranky as if I was given a lemon meringue pie 
with just meringue and no lemon. It is fluffy and flavorless, with no zing 
-- where is the context? Where is the sense of who is reading what, who 
prefers what? We get back a bunch of results, but have no idea which are 
the really good ones, the eccentric clever ones, the oddball sloppy ones, 
the underappreciated brilliant pieces.

When I was a young thing (and I am dating myself here!), the public 
library in my town had cards in the back of the books listing who had 
checked them out recently. Then they graduated to address stickers. In 
both cases, I found myself picking up a book that interested me and 
immediately turning to the back to see who else had been reading it. I had 
figured out that the most interesting and enjoyable books had usually been 
read by a couple other people whose names I learned to recognize. I didn't 
necessarily know who these folk were, and most of them I never met, but I 
sure knew I appreciated their taste in good books!

Now, with del.icio.us, I find myself at last able to do the same thing. I 
watch ratcatcher, without knowing who he is, send him links, and he 
sometimes funnels links to me, too. I watch choconancy, vielmetti, 
jensjeppe, hardinmd, virginiastevens, jokay, daneel.ariantho, and cbonner 
(in no particular order). I've met two of them. I find my Web 2.0 
communities overlapping, and have met Flickr friends in Second Life. I 
watch jokay (for example) in del.icio.us, slideshare, flickr, blogs/wikis, 
and Second Life.

Hurray, hurray! But it isn't enough. Yes, we will continue to move, 
evolve, and this moment is but a step along the way. I now use "Web 2.0" 
but still don't like it, because it implies that this is more than a step 
along the way, and love it, because it is an easy handle to gather the 
tools that have become so essential to my life and way of thinking and 
learning.

So this is no ending and no beginning, but another waystation for the 
traveler. A lovely waystation, and next time I come by, perhaps it will be 
Spring, with flowers.

  -- Patricia Anderson, pfa at umich.edu

[snip]
> On 4/30/07, Hutchens, Chad <chutchens at montana.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Hmmm...as a passing fad I guess I meant that I think the level of
>> attention in libraryland to Library 2.0 will pass.  I do think that
>> there will be things from Web/Library 2.0 that will stick, just not all
>> of it.
[snip]