Saturday, March 31, 2007

AfterThoughts

OK, I'm not positive that I completed each and every exercise - some time around my February trip to Florida I may have missed something. I could probably catch up if necessary. But I have been thinking - not just about Learning 2.0 or even Library 2.0, but about the broader Web 2.0 in general - and maybe addressing my thoughts via this post can substitute for any missed exercise(s).

Web 2.0, in all its permutations and social connectivity tools, has been discussed at great length for several years already. Amidst these discussions, many questions continue to be asked. The more I think about it, the more questions I have - some of which I'll ask here.

While Web 1.0 was a resource created largely by those with techonological knowledge and skills, Web 2.0 has been more of a grassroots revolution pairing technology with pop culture to provide a wide variety of computer users with what we want. This relates directly with the old argument in librarianship: Do we give the public what they NEED or what they WANT? At this moment, with huge interest in Library 2.0, we're trying to understand more of just what it is our patrons do want, how they choose to communicate, how they search for information resources, and how we can best provide such resources at their points of need.

One of my questions about all this is: How do we in librarianship know what Web 2.0 resources to embrace vs. those that might be current fads or whose future is greatly endangered? For example, the very popular YouTube has been a money-loser for Google. Can YouTube continue to thrive in its current manner or will limits to it cause user dissatisfaction? By the time libraries catch up, will the general public be on to the Next Big Web 2.0 Thing? How much of this stuff is best left for personal recreation and how much should be embraced by libraries? And which library staff members can drive such change, anyway - recent library school graduates on the front lines, support staff, management, or will it take a concerted cooperative effort at all levels?

The personal vs. professional use of Web 2.0 tools is particularly intriguing to me. When I first discovered the possibilities of live online reference service via the Internet Public Library MOO (Multi-User, Object-Oriented environment, via telnet) way back in mid-1995, the professional quickly blended with the personal. We "Early Adopters" of the technology became adept at balancing the two aspects of this amazing Internet (not Web) resource. However, library management at the time looked askance at what I was trying to do professionally, assuming that the recreational aspect of the technology was interfering my job and wasn't sufficiently useful to the library. All these years later, we're still advised by the City not to use City-owned property to browse the Web or "play," although in Learning 2.0 we did get to play, and it was, indeed, in the best interest of the employees as well as the employer.

OK, this is what happens when I'm granted a little time to think: I get long-winded. I need to wrap up this post very soon. Overall, it seems to me, one who earned an undergraduate degree in Sociology, that Web 2.0 is one great sociological phenomenon. It reflects the ever-changing ways that people relate to each other by means of Web resources and tools. It's absolutely amazing how people have become so much more socially interconnected by means of Web technology. In many ways this is a good thing, and yet there are also negatives that should be addressed. What about people whose lives are too hectic or are even just surviving day-to-day - do they find any value in, say, Rollyo? I wonder, too, about true introverts who don't want to be more socially connected but are practically forced to be so by new cellphone and Web 2.0 technology (although some tools do have Private settings). Introverts are already misunderstood by the extraverted majority - will Web 2.0 increase this dichotomy? Will it also increase the chasm between the current young and old segments of society, with older people being uninterested in or unable to grasp all the bells and whistles of the new technology?

I have many more questions but the library closes in 10 minutes. If you've read this entire post, you deserve one of the memory sticks given to those who successfully finish Learning 2.0.

1 comment:

LaSeal Djonz said...

Great comments on your explorations! I'm reading this for the first time -- I should have discovered you earlier.