Library 2.0 summary

When I try to summarize library 2.0 two thoughts immediately come to mind: #1 Wow! What a great program. And #2 Wow! I'm going to have a lot more time to get my work done now.

I'll address #2 first. Thirty minutes an exercise was pretty unrealistic. Thirty minutes was reasonable for most of the exercises by themselves (most not all), but the blog portion pushed the time requirement well above 30 minutes. If I had a lot to say about a topic 30 minutes wasn't even enough for the blog portion.

However, time requirements aside, library 2.0 was great. I learned about all kinds of stuff. Podcasts, RSS feeds, blogging, you name it I did it. Highlights included LibraryThing and the Web 2.0 awards site (I ended up finding a great deal on a plane ticket from a travel site featured on there); lowlights included Technorati and Netlibrary.

I wish that the program would have included a firefox lesson. I feel like a lot of people could have benefited from that, especially a firefox add-ons lesson. As far as things the library could implement, I feel like pretty much everything. If you go thru library 2.0 point by point, pretty much everything should have a place on our website. For example we should have featured librarian blogs, which recommend books (those blogs should be supplemented w/ LibraryThing accounts) and advertise some of our programs here at the library. We already have implemented the wiki for staff (great work by the way), but we should make one for patrons as well, where they can include their insights about the library. We have a myspace page, that's a start, now we need to do something with it. We should allow user tagging on our catalog (I know Teenagers -- California -- Los Angeles -- Conduct of life -- Drama is what i think to search for when I want the karate kid collection, but I'm not sure that's what your average joe would guess). I could go on and on... but then I'd have to go over the thirty minute limit. ;)

Thanks library 2.0 I've learned a lot.