Reading the articles from OCLC's newsletter and the Wikipedia article and its sources gave me a new appreciation of the Web 2.0 trend in libraries. In fact, together, they gave me a sense of the future for libraries; it looks quite different from the current, "typical" library. Fundamental concepts of the 2.0 thing: beta is forever; take the library to the user and, in fact, involve the user in development. A perfect example of this is tags. I have been very enthusiastic about the democratic process of tagging. John Riemer has some great ideas about libraries sharing catalogue records without redundancy, using the web as the model. My favorite: "Through RSS feeds, libraries can package and push their content to users’ preferred working places." I could actually do that for my teachers, as I add stuff to the collection! Wendy Schulz, a futurist, has a great perspective, seeing libraries evolve from archives to communities to virtual reality idea labs.
What does all this mean for me? for school libraries? I still have kids asking me what a web research project has to do with "Library." And I still have the problem of saying, "No, we don't have that title" when a teen asks for the latest pulp teen fiction (one of Tom Storey's "icebergs:" purchasing a title 'just in case' the right user comes along--chances are slim that s/he will). Should I be pointing her to the computer and offering an online version?
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