Week 6 Thing 15

I enjoyed reading Dr. Wendy Schultz's article on Library 2.0. I liked the coffee analogy of progression from commodity to product to service to experience. She says, "from selling coffee beans to selling Maxwell House to serving coffee at Dunkin Donuts to providing an exotic Starbucks' coffee permutation in its chattering, WiFi, jazz cafe atmosphere." This idea is superimposed on the library. The fundamentals of Library 2.0 state "the need for libraries to adopt a strategy for constant change while promoting a participatory role for library users." In summary of Dr. Schultz's article, the libraries commodity are books. The next factor is the product. How do we package our commodity? Even as we evolve and our barriers are eliminated, people will still need help navigating their way. Examples of how our barriers are eliminated are providing digital downloads, tagging and reader contributions. Going beyond Library 2.0 to Library 3.0, books will enter the "virtual graphic world...where books themselves will have avatars and online personalities."

The Library 2.0 concept is very interesting. Technology is changing so rapidly and is affecting the way we do business in the library. Our library has adapted in many ways in the past few years with email notifications, a patron blog, rss feeds, ebooks and audio, streaming music, ask-a-librarian service (live, email or phone), wireless technology and twitter.

As the economy tanks, the library's sense of place is becoming more important once again. People are flocking to the libraries for help during this period of economic upheaval. So we have one eye to all the future advances but also provide a comforting, helpful destination. I'm sure there are ways we can improve, but it seems to me that we are balancing the needs of our community fairly well. We seem to have gone from just dealing in books to the more exotic downloads and various digital formats to providing pleasant places to visit. The nature of libraries is change and we must continue to adapt to stay viable in the community.