Back to the day job…
Posted by ionapreston on May 12, 2008
As a wannabe librarian, I’m interested by the concept of Library 2.0. When I’ve been reading about it, especially in blogs, I’ve noticed quite a few mentions of Ann Arbor District Library in Michigan, but I’ve never bothered having a good look at it.
They definitely use a lot of Web 2.0 type applications – there’s several blogs, which actually seem to get commented on, RSS feeds, and they have the option to actually tag books in the catalogue using user generated tags. There has been some criticism about it, especially about lack of individual mass . Laura Cohen notes in her (now defunct) library 2.0 blog just because it isn’t exactly how you’d envisage it doesn’t mean it hasn’t worked, or isn’t useful to someone. I’d agree that there is a potential problem about critical mass, but as long as it runs in tandem to traditional cataloguing schemes so you can still find information in the usual way, there’s no harm in doing things like that. If nothing else, it sends out a message that the library is open to people getting involved.
