Library 2.0 Thoughts

After reading the articles on the OCLC website it reminded me why I have a bit of a problem with "Library 2.0." I thoroughly embrace technology and try to take advantage of it to make my life/work easier but it's not the solution to every question.

Let's remember the 5 laws of S. R. Ranganathan:

Books are for use.
Every reader his or her book.
Every book its reader.
Save the time of the reader.
The library is a growing organism.

See the last one - "a growing organism". Why do we as a profession feel that we must change our thought process when Ranganathan had it all along? Libraries, and for that matter librarians, are ever changing things. If we are not, then we have failed in our professional duties. We may need to change our terminology (book to information regardless of format) and use new ways of getting to the necessary information but the process and the reason for what we do remains the same. We don't have to climb on the 2.0 or 3.0 etc bandwagon to fulfill our mission.

The other problem I have is that it is easy to get caught up in the terminology and being "on the cutting edge" that it can hold us back from fully doing our jobs as librarians. The idea becomes the whole thing and the implementation and purpose gets lost. All these authors sound so enthused but if you don't have the follow through, you end up with frustrated librarians who are giving sub par service through no fault of their own.

I think we need to stop trying to label things and just do what Ranganathan and others defined in the first place - help our users find what they want, when they want it, and how they want it. By remembering this simple theory, the heart librarianship, it's much easier not to be intimidated and afraid of growth or change and to use technology as another tool in our arsenal not the only one.

http://www.oclc.org/nextspace/002/1.htm