Meredith Farkas: Web 2.0 in Libraries: Theory and Practice, Part 1
I got to listen to a presentation Meredith Farkas gave Wednesday via the Special Libraries Association about Web 2.0 technologies in libraries. She’s incredibly knowledgeable, as you may know. I had the opportunity to attend a few of her presentations this past fall because of Wikimania and Internet Librarian.
I really liked her definition of XML feeds. She imediately made the distinction between distributing content versus the presentation of the material.
“Any software tool allows you to see the best and worst of people,” she said as she introduced YouTube and similar tools the general public can use to share their material. She also discussed the value of being able to tap the collective mind, though she cautioned about people’s credentials by asking if we’d rather ask a trained doctor about chest pain or someone without medical training.
“We have to be where our users are. We can’t always expect them to come to us when they need our help,” she explained while stressing the importance of various Web 2.0 tools and why librarians should learn about them and use appropriate ones. She highly recommends getting rid of barriers and using interactive tools to reach clients.
She highlighted these library sites: Ann Arbor District Library, the Hennepin County Library Catalog (because it allows users to comment on catalog items), and the North Carolina State University Endeca catalog (Endeca is based on Cambridge, MA).
Meredith highly encourages us to step out of the library to find out what it is our clients really need and want. Although it’s often difficult to stop what it is we do in our jobs each day, we need to put things aside and think like new and infrequent library users.
