Librarian 2.0?

Library 2.0 has received quite a bit of controversy recently when Wikipedia community debated whether the term deserved a place on Wikipedia. In the end, Library 2.0 remained, and all is well. Or is it? How about the librarian of the "future," one who works in a Library 2.0? Stephen Abram has an innovative list of what constitutes this Librarian 2.0 model:

(1) Understand the power of the Web 2.0 opportunities

(2) Learn the major tools of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0

(3) Combine e-resources and print formats and is container and format agnostic

(4) Is device-independent and uses and delivers to everything from laptops to PDAs to iPods

(5) Develop targeted federated search and adopts the OpenURL standard

(6) Connect people and technology and information in context

(7) Doesn’t shy away from non-traditional cataloging and classification and chooses tagging, tag clouds, folksonomies, and user-driven content descriptions and classifications where appropriate

(8) Embrace non-textual information and the power of pictures, moving images, sight, and sound

(9) Understand the “long tail” and leverages the power of old and new content

(10) See the potential in using content sources like the Open Content Alliance, Google Print, and Open WorldCat

(11) Connect users to expert discussions, conversations, and communities of practice and participates there as well

(12) Use the latest tools of communication (such as Facebook) to connect content, expertise, information coaching, and people

(13) Use and develops advanced social networks to enterprise advantage

(14) Connect with everyone using their communication mode of choice – telephone, Skype, IM, SMS, texting, email, virtual reference, etc.

(15) Encourage user driven metadata and user developed content and commentary

(16) Understand the wisdom of crowds and the emerging roles and impacts of the blogosphere, Web syndicasphere and wikisphere

What Makes a Librarian?

Every one has a "trigger" for reflection in his or her career. Mine came relatively recently when I was confronted with an interesting commentary made by a young bookshelver at work. It was during a break when we were sitting around and talking about the library. The library is currently hiring new reference clerks to do both circulation and reference. My friend curiously questioned the purpose of having librarians when the work was seemingly so easy. He said something to the extent of:

Why have [librarians]? Anyone can do searching on Google. And anyone can point out which area the books belong to...

To a certain extent, he's right. I'm glad I had heard this comment. There are many who echo his sentiments. And in many ways, it should force us in the profession to reflect on what we actually do. Why are librarians important? Why is it necessary for professional training? Why should we be compensated well for what we do? Here are my reasons:

(1) Management - Not just staff, but also the collections, the buildings, the budget, openings and closings, conflict resolutions, and just about anything else related to the running of a library. There's a lot of responsibility involved, and the higher up one is, the greater the pressure. If not done properly, your position is on the line, and the library's as well.

(2) Knowledge - Effective reference work means effective retrieval and searching skills. That means having a deep understanding of precision/recall, different commercial databases, boolean searching, reference titles, good memory, insatiable curiosity. Above all, it means intelligence. You can't be an effective librarian without a broad knowledge background, and that is why librarians need at least six years of education and a master's in order to be a librarian. All librarians are well-read, intellectual, and extremely creative; there's a reason it's a graduate programme.

(3) Bibliographic Control - Librarians may not all be cataloguers, but at the end of the day, effective searching means a solid understanding of MARC records and controlled vocabularies. Regardless of which kind of library, librarians need to have a good grasp of vocabulary in order to do competent searching on databases and search engines.

(4) Information Technology - Librarians have always been underestimated in their technological savvy. But I am always surprised at just how much of it is required in their work, and most librarians if not all do an excellent job despite the lack of formal training. Librarians have always been ahead of the game in technology, first with huge computers, then OPACs, then then databases, then finally the Internet. Now with Web 2.0, librarians are once again at the forefront with integrating blogs, wikis, and social software into their work.

(5) Teaching - I am forever amazed at the amount of teaching that librarians perform in their work. Yet, much of this teaching is unrecognized and underappeciated. Librarians teach a lot: from using a mouse, to writing resumes, to using Web 2.0 tools. Much of the time, librarians are not even formally trained with the pedagogical theories; they teach well based on their intuitive intelligence and passion for their work. So with that said, librarians deserve a pat on the back. Bravo to you all!

To Continue with Web 2.0...

In my continuing series, of which I have written here, and here, and here, and also here, Paul Anderson's What is Web 2.0? Ideas, technologies and implications for education is the most comprehensive to date. As I have mentioned, I am compiling and synthesizing the literature surrounding Web 2.0, and will be writing an article. As information experts, we are constantly handling information, where we sit behind a computer most of the day churning through emails and invisible matter. Hence, I believe it's important to understand the architecture behind what we are doing online, and I believe Anderson does a superb job highlighting six major concepts of Web 2.0:

(1) Individual Production and User Generated Content - Free social software tools such as blogs and wikis have lowered the barrier to entry, following the same footsteps as the 1980s self-publishing revolution sparked by the advent of the office laser printer and desktop publishing software. In the world of Web 2.0, with a few clicks of the mouse, a user can upload videos or photos from their digital cameras and into their own media space, tag it with keywords and make the content available for everyone in the world.

(2) Harness the Power of the Crowd - Harnessing not the "intellectual" power, but the power of the "wisdom of the crowds," "crowd-sourcing" and "folksonomies."

(3) Data on an Epic Scale - Google has a total database measured in hundreds of petabytes (a million, billion bytes) which is swelled each day by terabytes of new information. Much of this is collected indirectly from users and aggregated as a side effect of the ordinary use of major Internet services and applications such as Google, Amazon, and EBay. In a sense these services are 'learning' every time they are used by mining and sifting data for better services.

(4) Architecture of Participation - Through the use of the application or service, the service itself gets better. Simply argued, the more you use it - and the more other people use - the better it gets. Web 2.0 technologies are designed to take the user interactions and utilize them to improve itself. (e.g. Google search).

(5) Network Effects - It is general economic term often used to describe the increase in vaue to the existing users of a service in which there is some form of interaction with others, as more and more people to start to use it. As the Internet is, at heart, a telecommunications network, it is therefore subject to the network effect. In Web 2.0, new software services are being made available which, due to their social nature, rely a great deal on the network effect for their adoption.

(6) Openness - Web 2.0 places an emphasis on making use of the information in vast databases that the services help to populate. This means Web 2. 0 is about working with open standards, using open source software, making use of free data, re-using data and working in a spirit of open innovation.