Life after 2.0

This panel featured some of the big names in the library 2.0 movement discussing the state of play with web 2.0 and libraries now that we are several years into it and the first flush of excitement has died down. First of all, Meredith Farkas spoke about some of the reasons that web 2.0 services fail to live up to their promise - doing things because everyone else is or because it's the new cool thing, assuming that we know better than our readers what they need and not taking into account whether they actually use any of these services themselves, not taking into account the cost in terms of time and effort of apparently free tech, losing interest and letting things fall by the wayside. None of these were unsurprising, but it reiterated the point that web 2.0 services are not cosmetic, but tools that help us provide real services. As with any other service, librarians need to think about what they're doing, use tools that provide tangible benefits, have a clear purpose for any new service, invest in terms of time and effort to maintain and monitor, and listen to our users about what they are doing and what they want.

Secondly, Lori Bell spoke about Second Life, and again what she said was not anything surprising. Second Life has always had a small number of devotees, but even they acknowledge that it isn't for everyone - Lori Bell said this right up-front at the start of her talk! I agree with her that this is the way that the internet is going to go eventually, virtual worlds and 3D websites, but it isn't there yet and is still some way off, in my opinion. I applaud the Second Life librarians for embracing it and exploring the possibilities (so the rest of us don't have to!), but as far as the majority is concerned, I think we should just keep a weather eye on it and wait for the next generation of such sites to develop and become practical.

Michelle Springer from the Library of Congress then spoke about what the Library of Congress has been doing with web 2.0 services, and I think they're really a model of what can be done and how. They are on Flickr, Twitter, YouTube, iTunesU and now Facebook, as well as bringing in web 2.0 features to their own site, and are doing it all with a real sense of purpose and in a really considered manner. Expanding into external sites is a big decision for them as they often have to negotiate amendments to the terms and conditions so that they can use them as a government agency - eg arranging to keep adverts and promoted videos off their YouTube page. Naturally it helps that they have the legal weight to do this and also have such fantastic resources that many people are really interested in. Michelle spent some time talking about the Flickr page and the way that their involvement there has affected both Flickr (setting up the Commons to bring in other organisations in the same way) and their own site (incorporating information obtained via the comments on their photos in their catalogue records). This is where them being such a well-known organisation really helps - they have no shortage of interested users willing to comment and participate, so they don't seem to have encountered the problem so many other libraries have of not getting their users to get involved. I've watched the Library of Congress's ventures in this arena with a lot of interest ever since they started with Flickr, both as someone interested in libraries' use of web 2.0 and as a US studies librarian, and continue to be very impressed with what they are doing. I think the Bodleian could take a huge amount of inspiration from them in this area!

Finally, Helene Blowers, creator of the 23 Things Learning 2.0 programme, wrapped up the session with a talk about what we've learned over the past few years of library 2.0. She talked about the shift from web 2.0 to social media, following a quote from Clay Shirky that "things don't get socially interesting until they get technologically boring". We are now in the socially interesting page, where we've reached the tipping point and everybody's using a lot of these things, or at the very least aware of them. But that presents its own danger, as businesses etc jump on them as marketing tools and undermine the very essence of web 2.0 as collaborative - just viewing Facebook and Twitter etc as other channels to communicate their message and control. Helene therefore reiterated the importance of the ideals of web 2.0 - empowering users, letting go of the conversation, listening not telling, engaging etc. However it seems to me that unfortunately this is not what actually works, and I don't think web 2.0 has ever lived up to this promise. She pointed out that some are arguing web 2.0 is actually about going back to the basics of what the web was originally intending to be, and I think this is true, but I also think that the cyclical nature works both ways - the web, both 1.0 and 2.0, has tremendous potential to bring people together, to be social, but in actual fact ends up being used more as just more media. I don't know if that cycle will ever be broken, but I think the difference is that as technology develops it does become easier to live up to the ideal a bit more - web 2.0 tools allow for so much more interation and collaboration than the old static HTML pages, so perhaps we're getting there, but no matter how many evangelists advocate the idealistic state of mind, the realities of society and business provide big stumbling blocks to living up to that potential fully.