Friday, September 7, 2007

Week 6, Thing 15: Read a few perspectives on Web 2.0, Library 2.0 & the future of libraries

In reading some of the perspectives, I started to wonder... will Web 2.0 end up being like Beta Videos and Laserdiscs? With the increasing ease that anyone who can navigate the web can upload their opinions as if they are facts, it is going to take a far more Internet savvy person to know what is a reliable source for factual information.

Honestly, I don't feel that all these things are going to dramatically change libraries. I've had to instruct far too many of our customers on how to click a mouse to think that this will become that life altering. (I know I've had exposure to a computer since the early-mid 1980s, and I can't imaging I was any more 'privileged' than the average person, being a child of welfare.) We will still need to have our 'oldie but goodie' print sources. (Google is not the best source to find out who was the Emperor of Italy when Pope Innocent II was Pope... but there is a great book that will tell you quite easily! Thanks Cat Lady)

As always, with the good comes the bad. I've used an Internet community to locate some of my old friends of whom I've lost track over the years. Yay My Space! However, I've also been exposed to some really awful disgusting people on My Space who liked to wax poetic about their nether regions much to my disgust. (Yay discovering My Space filtering options!)

I do think that there are some benefits of web 2.0, but will it revolutionize the world... I doubt it. Course, I've been wrong before!

And then, there is another YAY! Cuz now I've done 15 things and only 8 more to go! And rumor has it that this was the worst week! So it should be smooth sailing from here!

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