Exercise 15: Library 2.0

I am particular to the ideas expressed by Michael Stephens in his essay "Into a New World of Librarianship" as it seems to present a rational approach to the adoption of a mindset and the skills necessary to build a believable 2.0 existence. Specifically, I appreciate how he uses key phrases of simplicity addressing how libraries need to embrace web 2.0 tools to "... further the mission of the library ..." and how the technology must meets the needs of the users in a beneficial way and NOT for the sake of trends or status. The arguments he presents are lucid, practical, and present a groundwork on which one can easily relate to the promotion of all of the tools necessary to make 2.0 (and further) more than an idealization of concepts and models of service for the library of the future.

My feeling about the 2.0 future is, to say the least, ambivalent or at the least shrouded in a haze of uncertainty. I want to believe that the libraries of tomorrow will in fact adapt to technological trends and employ them in a manner which is functionally sound and benefits everyone involved. Do libraries need to evolve to fit into an ever-expanding technologically advanced world? Of course they do, but the traditions that have made libraries the valued institutions that educated societies recognize them to be probably shouldn't aspire to abandon those basic tenents and properties in a rush to fit in to the virtual future and beyond. Nobody, well at least nobody that I know, wants to be viewed as some outdated Luddite when it comes to adapting to technology and it's place in our world, but to presume that libraries need to rapidly adapt to 2.0 existences is a stretch that just isn't ready to happen on a large scale basis. But it's like the man said ... one boat at a time.