TechExpress Sessions Explore Web 2.0 Technologies

This Summer at the State Library, Friday mornings have become an exciting time! Thanks to our Library Development staff, we have enjoyed a staff development series called TechExpress. Each Friday morning, a different staff member presents information related to Web 2.0. Here's a list of some of the topics: Blogging, Social-Networking Sites (MySpace), Library Thing, Tag Clouds, Flickr and Bookmarking Sites (del.icio.us). These sessions have been very interactive and we've spent a lot of time discussing the potential uses for these tools within the library setting. What we've concluded: We must become part of the conversation that is Web 2.0 in order to stay competitive and move our libraries forward to meet our users' needs.

We will be offering these classes for public libraries via OPAL very soon but just to get you thinking, I would like to point you to a great source of information. OCLC's most recent newsletter is entitled Web 2.0: Five Experts Ponder the Future.

Here are a few highlights that relate to technical services:

• According to Rick Anderson, the era of the "just in case" print collection is over. Users still expect access to everything, which is what started this collection in the first place. The difference now is that they want it electronically and not necessarily from the physical library. We must pay attention to our virtual users who prefer e-journals, ebooks, blogs and podcasts to printed materials. We are certainly considering this at the State Library and I hope you are too. It's time to dust off those collection development policies and start re-evaluating what our users really want!
  
• According to John Riemer, the Head of UCLA's Cataloging & Metadata Center, the focus for the future is on libraries being able to "package and push" their content to users in the users' prefered environment. This means exploring RSS feeds, federated search tools and the expansion of metadata to give libraries a competitive advantage and to move forward with bibliographic services.

These are just a couple of the experts whose ideas are highlighted in this article. Michael Stephens is also featured here. He will be presenting at our Technology Institute in September. In addition to reading this article, you might consider subscribing to his blog: Tame the Web . It's a great way to get more information on Web 2.0 technologies and other related library news.