Building Academic Library 2.0

Notes from Meredith Farkas' presentation at the LAUC-Berkeley Academic Library 2.0 Conference. I'll add some commentary later tonight.

Web 1.0 – democratized access to information

• Users interacted w/ web as consumers; to produce, needed experience, space, etc.

Web 2.0 – all participants in web creation/contribution

• Hubris of 2.0 – assumption that nothing revolutionary happened before 2.0
• More of an evolution, driven by technologies; libraries not the only game in town anymore
  

Academic Library 2.0 – state of mind

• Meeting user names
• Trusting our users (radical trust)
• Getting rid of the culture of perfect (start simple and test, more iterative, not waiting until something is “done”)
• Aware of emerging technologies and opportunities
• Learn to extrapolate to see what other types of libraries/non-libraries are doing
• Looking outside of library world for applications, opportunities, inspiration
  

Building Academic Library 2.0 Externally

• Know your users; look beyond netgen stereotypes: what do they value, how do they research (Univ Rochester anthro study); go into their space and ask for feedback
• Question everything: do you still need to be sitting at the refdesk when all of your ref contact is IM? Dropping Dewey for bookstore-style classification
• Communicate better with patrons (blogs, etc.) – including by library directors, accepting and using feedbackHighlight collections with tools like Flickr; RSS for new collections; adding our resources to Wikipedia
• Embed services where they are: Facebook and Myspace, portal in WebCTBuild participation: take advantage of our users’ knowledge of these subjects in saved resources (wikis); social bookmarking (PennTags)
• Better at building partnerships
• Don’t focus on technology, or abandon constituents who won’t use these tools
  

Building Academic Library 2.0 Internally

• Build learning culture; not everyone one gets to go to conferences; create in-house learning (Learning 2.0 at PL of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County)
• Develop risk-tolerant culture; “perpetual beta”
• Collect knowledge internallyCapitalize on your network: Facebook as online rolodex
• Be transparent, internally as well as externally
• Good ideas can come from anyone and anywhere
• Nurture talent (she heard this from some LJ Movers & Shakers at IL--that they weren't feeling appreciated at their institutions)
• Be agile (need 3 mos to decide on blogging software?); Empower staff to make some decisions
• Involve staff from all levels in planning; helps avoid tunnel vision
• Avoid technolust; start with needs, then look tools
• Understand staff member’s needs and limitations (why people fear change; understand learning styles; some staff need more than just written instructions—prefer hands-on instructions/help)Time must be devoted; staff not given time for this, they way we do with reference shifts, etc.
• Keeping up w/ new technologies and share with colleagues – make part of job description
• Need new staff, or shuffle w/in existing staff with these interests
  

Question we were left with: Is your organization currently structured to make this happen?

Web 2.0 Staff Workshops

Here's the blog for my workshop, "From Blogs to Wikis: Getting the Most Out of the New Web." This is a 2-part workshop I now teach through my university's staff development office. One of the things I've been working on is integrating the tools we're covering in the workshop in the actual learning/instruction process. It's a learning process for me, as I want to bring more of these techniques into my chemical information seminar this Spring.

This week, the focus is on blogs, RSS and Google applications like Docs and Spreadsheets.

I'll be adding more stuff over the week, and hopefully the workshop participants will accept their "assignment" and continue adding to the blog and trying out one of the Google products. Next week will be wikis, the whole social networking/tagging/bookmarking arena, and possibly Firefox.