I think the Cites & Insights special issue explores the virtues and dangers of the name itself as much as I’d choose to explore them.

The second paragraph notes some attitudes that have definitely popped up, some instances referred to in the special issue, some since them.

I suspect you’re doing what needs to be done: Paying attention and building tools within your library’s means, and presumably seeing how those tools work/tuning them to work better. This is all good, this is what progressive (in the apolitical sense) librarians should be doing…and, albeit given different tools, what they’ve always done. Which is not to say the new tools aren’t powerful and worth attention: They are.

I don’t see it that way – every library has different resources, every library has different staff members who can do different things. My library is lucky to have 3 people on the staff who can program (2 in PHP and 1 in Perl) We’re also lucky to have a full time IT staff of 3 (with one more on the way) and a part time staff of 1, but I know that we are in the minority (probably a very small minority).

I just think that L2 is about moving forward, in the end I’m not picky about what people decide to call it, but I hope to see more changes going on in my library especially since we have the resources to do so.

Walt, you have opened my eyes to a side of L2 I hadn’t seen before – I don’t know who’s saying that “public libraries will fail if they don’t “transform” themselves in X years or that every library, no matter how small and underfunded, must devote X amount of time/resources to these new tools.”, but I’m not one of those people – I’m just supported of new technologies and moving forward as fast as my little fingers can take me

I think the Cites & Insights special issue explores the virtues and dangers of the name itself as much as I’d choose to explore them.

The second paragraph notes some attitudes that have definitely popped up, some instances referred to in the special issue, some since them.

I suspect you’re doing what needs to be done: Paying attention and building tools within your library’s means, and presumably seeing how those tools work/tuning them to work better. This is all good, this is what progressive (in the apolitical sense) librarians should be doing…and, albeit given different tools, what they’ve always done. Which is not to say the new tools aren’t powerful and worth attention: They are.

I have yet to encounter anyone who says that no librarians should spend any time working on new services that use the tools sometimes lumped under the Web2.0 brand. I have yet to encounter anyone who believes that libraries should not change. Which is quite different than agreeing that public libraries will fail if they don’t “transform” themselves in X years or that every library, no matter how small and underfunded, must devote X amount of time/resources to these new tools.

I don’t see it that way – every library has different resources, every library has different staff members who can do different things. My library is lucky to have 3 people on the staff who can program (2 in PHP and 1 in Perl) We’re also lucky to have a full time IT staff of 3 (with one more on the way) and a part time staff of 1, but I know that we are in the minority (probably a very small minority).

I just think that L2 is about moving forward, in the end I’m not picky about what people decide to call it, but I hope to see more changes going on in my library especially since we have the resources to do so.

Walt, you have opened my eyes to a side of L2 I hadn’t seen before – I don’t know who’s saying that “public libraries will fail if they don’t “transform” themselves in X years or that every library, no matter how small and underfunded, must devote X amount of time/resources to these new tools.”, but I’m not one of those people – I’m just supported of new technologies and moving forward as fast as my little fingers can take me

I have yet to encounter anyone who says that no librarians should spend any time working on new services that use the tools sometimes lumped under the Web2.0 brand. I have yet to encounter anyone who believes that libraries should not change. Which is quite different than agreeing that public libraries will fail if they don’t “transform” themselves in X years or that every library, no matter how small and underfunded, must devote X amount of time/resources to these new tools.

You can’t have productive conversation if you can’t define your terms clearly enough that everybody in the conversation can be sure they’re all talking about the same thing. That “Library 2.0″ can’t be clearly defined has been conceded by many of those who continue to use it. So it gets in the way rather than helping us help each other to get to where we all want to be. The conversations about improving services would be more effective if we didn’t keep tripping over a bit of meaningless jargon.

You can’t have productive conversation if you can’t define your terms clearly enough that everybody in the conversation can be sure they’re all talking about the same thing. That “Library 2.0″ can’t be clearly defined has been conceded by many of those who continue to use it. So it gets in the way rather than helping us help each other to get to where we all want to be. The conversations about improving services would be more effective if we didn’t keep tripping over a bit of meaningless jargon.

Now if I could figure out this Spam Karma thing so that it would stop blocking all comments I’d be happy – sorry you were blocked.

Now if I could figure out this Spam Karma thing so that it would stop blocking all comments I’d be happy – sorry you were blocked.