Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Library 2.0

In each of the articles I read, one thing keeps jumping out at me; it is the idea that we have to change the SYSTEMS in order to make them as easy as possible for our users to interact with. We have to stop thinking of ourselves as being able to reach and teach all of our users - it just can't be done. Instead, we need to set things up so that our users can be successful when they interact and access information. That sounds like a great goal but, honestly, I need a lot more time, thought, advice and information in order for me to do this successfully at the elementary level. If anyone out there has any ideas, feel free to jump in.


And my early frustration with this reminds me of the view of the one librarian in these articles; that we would move from Library 1.0 where librarians were the keeper of information to Library 4.0 where LIBRARIANS would be in demand - at least those who could sift through and make easily understandable this vast world of new ever-changing information. Sounds like a good goal.

1 comment:

Anj said...

Changing our systems to make them so intuitive that our users wouldn't need to ask for help should be every library's goal. It reminds me of some good advice which came from an unlikely source, an episode of Futurama, "When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."