While I was in London, many of my esteemed colleagues were in Singapore for the Bridging Worlds conference. Kathryn Greenhill posted her take aways:
http://librariansmatter.com/blog/2008/10/20/what-i-took-home-from-bridging-worlds/
- We need to share – our data and our co-operative efforts.
- Standards – data storage, web application, metadata – are vitally important to our work. We need to know what applies in our area and work to ensure they are developed sensibly and used well.
- 3. The GLAM sector – Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums – is converging. Libraries play an essential role in preserving, collating and providing access to these collections.
- 4. We can stop debating and trying to find definitions of Library 2.0 now. A participative, user-focused, web-enabled, Open and Transparent library can exist; whatever we want to call it. It does exist in places and we need the technical and visionary skills to facilitate it if our profession can survive.
- 5. The physical library can be a Third Place- somewhere that is not home, not work, but a gathering place where citizens feel pride of ownership and “at home”.
- 6. The online library is often a Second Place. Users come to our resources after they have first tried google, and they need more depth or organisation..
- 7. Not everyone is using Web 2.0 tools – it varies a lot within library staff and library user populations.
- 8. Unintended consequences often happen when we use Web 2.0 tools – many of them full of benefits for which we did not plan.