Thing #16

I read the different perspectives on Web 2.0 and there were some interesting ideas to think about.

In Anderson's article, he said we need to place "library services and content in the user's preferred environment (i.e., the Web)." How do we make everything available on the Web, as people seem to feel it should be--and for free! Doesn't someone have to pay for the databases, etc.? And there are still a lot of materials that are only available in print version (historical books, etc.) so I don't think we can get rid of our library collections and find everything online.

In the Schultz article, she said "tagclouds offer diverse connections, not focussed expertise" and "people will still need experienced tour guides." Many things we find on the web are good, but a librarian can add value by making sense of what is found there.

Riemer talks about better bibliographic services. He mentions user participation in assigning keywords ("tagging"), which could make the catalog more user friendly. Often it's frustrating trying to figure out what subject heading to search for--tags are what people are becoming familiar with using on the Web so these might make catalog searches more user friendly. I thought his idea about mapping geographic names in subject headings to latitude and longitude coordinates was interesting. That way users could easily access materials for nearby places.