Summing Up

Librarians are confronted by a smörgåsbord of innovative and/or wacky inventions on the web – all vying for our consideration.

Many concepts are bandied about: social networking, convergence, anything prefixed by the letter “e” or suffixed by “2.0”.

Over the past few weeks we’ve delved into a wide variety of software offerings and through practical experience have come to certain conclusions about their value to our libraries (i.e. our users).

Picture this. Now you do all your searching from home. Type in a subject heading and immediately receive a Library Thing style display of books. Once you’ve judged your book by its cover, click on it for further details. Perhaps there is an Amazon.com style facility to “search inside” so you can check the contents and index pages. Look at reader reviews and ratings.

Tick the boxes for books located in your nearest branch that are on shelf and you’ve got a powerful filtering tool.

Then check out the things other library patrons with similar interests found and you’re well on your way to a well rounded library experience.

The librarians’ challenge is to decide on which Web 2.0 style tools to integrate into the library website and to gain control of our websites, separate from council's I.T. departments.

The other point to make is that every element of our site that solicits contributions from the public, be it a review function in the catalog or a blog, must be moderated to ensure it complies with the current political correctness. This will avoid embarrassment and/or litigation.

We could certainly try podcasting library events. What members of the public would not find attractive the video podcasting of authors’ talks and special events. Who wouldn’t look forward to watching one of the world’s leading exponents of Lebanese cooking prepare tabouleh? After all not everyone can make it to a scheduled session

We may need to assign one staff member to take charge of the library’s digital media activities. Once you start posting content it’s not just a matter of filming, editing, compressing and uploading. Someone needs to manage copyright. Release forms must be filled out.

We could also try adding Rolyo search engines for particular subject areas to our site, online book clubs are also worth investigating

The funny thing is, although a lot of these things we have looked at over the past weeks are new to me, I feel like I’m talking about the past and that 3.0 is already upon us.