Thing #15

Thing #15: Web 2.0, Library 2.0 and the Future of Libraries

I'm a teacher, not a librarian, so I'm more immediately interested in the implications of 2.0 learning in the classroom than in the library. I found the video to be revealing ("I will be hired for a job that doesn't exist yet") and quite sobering ("I will read 8 books this year"?! I read eight books this week! You consarn kids quite that Face-tweeting on my lawn! And so forth). The article at that link is also fascinating reading. Key lines, to me:

Last spring I asked my students how many of them did not like school. Over half of them rose their hands. When I asked how many of them did not like learning, no hands were raised. ... And there’s the rub. We love learning. We hate school. What’s worse is that many of us hate school because we love learning.

The articles on Library 2.0 made for some interesting food for thought, however, since I am after all a library aficionado (a.k.a. geek). One clearly controversial point from Rick Henderson's piece struck me:

But it no longer makes sense to collect information products as if they were hard to get. They aren’t.

Well, I'm not sure that public libraries have ever collected things because they were hard for the individual to get. It may have been true at one point, but that's not the reason for the collection. The collection, then and today, exists to draw the patron in, to provide more than one point of view, to lead her down previously unexplored paths, and to enable the fortuitous "stumbling-upon" of new ideas, media, and favorites.

I agree with his assertion that library patrons (like students) must and do educate themselves as to how to use the tools they use to learn. But left to their own devices (ha! devices! geddit?), will patrons expose themselves to a broad array of viewpoints as they would with the existing collection? Michael Stephens' article notes that Librarian 2.0 "gets content" for the patron to use, remix, and so forth - and what is that content if not the collection?

Most people who have actually browsed in a library can attest to the experience of finding something they did not come in to get. (Actually, this model works with shopping for pretty much anything, as well.) It's true that the library no longer has to have a monumental collection on site - the Patron 2.0 should know how to order various editions or missing pieces from the web or InterLibrary Loan - but there's still a place for the collection itself as starting point.