ARTICLE TWO

Library 2.0: Service for the next-generation library

By Michael E. Casey and Laura C. Savastinuk

Casey and Savastinuk feel that Library 2.0 could revitalise the libraries approach in service and communication with customers.

The focus of Library 2.0 is user-centered change. In very simple terms Library 2.0 means making a library’s space, both virtual and physical, more interactive, collaborative, and driven by community needs.

It is a model for library service that encourages constant and purposeful change, inviting user participation in the creation of both the physical and the virtual services they want. Through customer driven improvements, libraries attempt to reach new users, and better serve their current ones.

Library 2.0 components

The library 2.0 model gives library users a participatory role in the services libraries offer and they are used. Users can also tailor library services as best suits their needs, either physically or electronically.

Casey and Savastinuk offer a timely warning about considering customers privacy when implementing customisable virtual services.


Library 2.0 is about using the best tools and ideas to provide the best possible service to our users.

Chilma (2007, ¶6) provides a neat definition by Darlene Fichter is:

Library 2.0 = (books ‘n stuff + people + radical trust) x participation

What does it involve?

Chilma (2007, ¶7) describes the basic drive of Library 2.0 is to get people back into the library by making the library relevant to what they want and need in their daily lives… to make the library a destination and not an afterthought. There have never been so many alternatives to libraries as information providers as there is today online. These alternatives are usually far more convenient than the Library even though libraries usually provide better quality information.

Library 2.0 is not totally about technology, but technology is an important
component of it, with blogs, tags, user-created feedback and the like. It’s
about services and attitude and community. It is about being relevant. It’s what
Libraries and Librarians are (or should be) about – providing services that
users want and need. Chilma (2007, ¶13)

Casey and Savastinuk reassure librarians with limited technology funding that they can still work towards a Library 2.0 model. Making physical changes that will better serve the customers needs is one thing that Casey and Savastinuk suggest.

Casey and Savastinuk also point out that older traditional services can be Library 2.0 if criteria are met. They ask that you consider what services that the library already offers and how they, if they are combined with a framework for continual change and feedback from the customers integrated into the library’s operations and it will be one way to becoming a Library 2.0

With information and ideas flowing in both directions (from the library to the user and from the user to the library) library services have the ability to evolve and improve on a constant and rapid basis. The user is participant, co-creator, builder and consultant.

Implications for Libraries

Library customers are used to using interactive, participatory services on the internet such as Amazon, Google, MySpace and Facebook. They want to interact, to participate. Do library catalogues and web sites allow that? The Web is no longer an electronic brochure, instead it is a gathering place. Library 2.0 helps librarians let go of very outdated view of the Web and move forward in the adoption of newer technologies and services. (Chilma (2007, ¶7)

Libraries need to focus on the users and what they need. Not what as the Librarians need. Librarians should be looking for ways to make library web sites more efficient in delivering content, in promoting the library and in engaging our users.

According to Kathryn Greenhill (2007) Library 2.0 means starting from the users’ experience of the library, ditching what is there for our convenience, but is an obstacle to them, and taking on some non traditional things that fit into our core brief to connect information and people. In some ways Library2.0 is more about changing Librarians rather that Libraries.

References

Chilma, Sue [2007] What is Library 2.0?
www.alia.org.au/groups/topend/sue.chilma.what.doc (Accessed 01/09/2008)

Greenhill, Kathryn [2007] What’s new about Library 2.0?, http://librariansmatter.com/blog (Accessed 01/09/2008)