New Library 2.0 Kerfuffle

What the heck is Library 2.0 anyway? What's it all about: technologies or services? This discussion has been revitalized in the biblioblogosphere by a series of posts by David Lee King, starting with Am I a 2.0 Librarian and the Library 2.0 Spectrum, which was followed by Library 2.0 spectrum thingie - asking for your input! and then Library 2.0 - Is it Techie Or Not?. All of these posts are well worth reading, both for King's ideas and especially for the discussion within the comments. What particularly set everyone off was the Library 2.0 Spectrum diagram, which emphasizes using particular technologies and uses the term "Luddite" to describe librarians who are not innovative users and adopters of emerging technologies. Earlier in July, King wrote two equally provocative posts on Librarian 2.0, again focusing on technology skills (Basic Competencies of a 2.0 Librarian and Basic Competencies of a 2.0 Librarian, take 2).

Here are some of responses from the biblioblogosphere:

• Cindi (who aptly deemed the whole discussion a kerfuffle) has been inspired to post two excellent video responses to King's posts on Chronicles of Bean: David's Librarian 2.0 Spectrum Thingie Another attempt at illustrating Librarian 2.0.
  
• King's posts were also a topic of discussion during the most recent episode of Uncontrolled Vocabulary, an online talk show about all things library.
  
• Steven Lawson on See Also contributes Writing and talking about librarian 2.0.

What do I think about all of this? As I've said before, I don't consider myself a tech person, but I'm endeavoring mightily to learn and use Web 2.0 technologies because I think they can be useful and valuable tools to help us better serve our users and, perhaps more importantly, people who aren't yet library users. If libraries and librarians don't continually strive to offer services that are useful, helpful and relevant, we might as well pack it in and go look for other jobs. We can't afford to stagnate or rest on our laurels; rather, we must innovate, stretch and learn so that we can offer the best possible services to as many people as possible. We must use and improve our mad organizational, research and searching skillz (yes, including the traditional ones). We must meet our users and potential users where they are and then we need to work our little tails off to let people know what we can do for them. For me, Library 2.0 is all about libraries and librarians being doing everything in their power to help as many people as possible find and use information.