Read the article I discuss below over here (note: this is a PDF file. The article was first published online in November 2005)
Chad and Milller’s article’s is helpful as an introduction to some of the important issues posed by Web 2.0 to libraries. It does well in sketching how Google and Amazon have redefined user expectations in information seeking, which seems intuitively correct but this is not substantiated with any research or evidence. There is also a reasonably worthwhile proposal toward developing a Library 2.0 model, one shaped by the social expectations of Web 2.0 technologies. Further examples of how Library 2.0 might actually work – aside from the example of linking libraries to Amazon – would have made this rather more persuasive. At present, this “White Paper” does not provide much of use if one wanted to implement these interesting ideas. Library managers could legitimately ask what kinds of concrete benefits this would bring to the institution and its users. Finally, the article is fatally crippled by its lack of awareness of the problems of the digital divide (assuming everybody has reliable access and sufficient competency to use the Internet). This perhaps should not be surprising given that the authors are based at a sophisticated knowledge management technology company in Britain, but librarians cannot make those kinds of assumptions due to their loyalty to the principles of universal public access. The article is ultimately useful as a brief introduction to this subject, but its lack of rigour in proposing its model and lack of social awareness place severe limits on its utility.
It may well be an academic prejudice, but I find the sort of vague writing involved in the above article to be quite irritating. This kind of document has the feel of notes for speech or presentation, the sort of document useful for starting a conversation (and a brief one at that) but little more.
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