#15 Library 2.0

Well I confess that I have not read (or thought much) about Library 2.0 before now –or Web 2.0 for that matter. After reading all of the OCLC newsletter and several linked articles listed in the Wikipedia entry for Library 2.0, I now feel that I have a better grasp of understanding what it is all about. Catalogers have been working in a collaborative (though not quite Web 2.0) environment for a few decades now. First with The NUC, then with OCLC, we have shared information, let others copy it, and we have “tagged” it with our holdings symbols. However, our collaboration was a closed, albeit large, environment. Only catalogers could download and upload information. Only catalogers could “tag” records.
What is different in Library 2.0, is that we are going to allow our bib records to be used in a manner that was not possible two decades ago. We are going to allow our patrons to “tag” these records. This “tag” will not critique our records, but will critique the items that our records describe. Additionally, while retaining traditional indexing, we are going to allow some indexing that is largely controlled by our patrons. Will this be better? Will it be worse? Or will it just be new and different?
We have seen how blogs (indeed, the web itself) have opened up discourse, have allowed us unprecedented access to viable news and information that we could not get before Web 2.0. We have seen how it will be harder for our politicians to lie to us, to hide information from us. At the same time, it will be easier to target and sway the thinking of masses of people in a matter of hours—worldwide—and as Al Gore has entitled his new book, this could be an “assault on reason.” Better? Worse? Or just new and different?
In a world where an otters holding hand video, or an article about Paris Hilton going to jail are more popular than information on global warming, the attack on our constitutional liberties, or the Iraq War, (or, for that matter, zombies), I have to pause and wonder if we are going in the right direction. ……But, has it always been thus? Have we humans always been distracted by the cute, the sensational, and the flamboyant to the detriment of reason and fact? I have to ask again, will it be better? Worse? Or merely just new and different? I don’t know the answer…but I DO know that it will be interesting, so hold onto your hats, we’re in for a ride.