Web/Library 2.0

I have just finished all four activities, and I must say that the blog and the web page were far superior explanations of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 than the videos (sometimes print is just better). I am a relatively young librarian both in age and in experiences, and one would think growing up in the generation of all night MTV and AOL chat would skew a person toward the techiness needed to openly embrace all things 2.0...for me that is not the case. It is not that I have not used these tools or that I don't understand how they work. I just tend to be rather persnickety about the tools I choose to employ. I think my main gripe with the 2.0 hype (not a poet but maybe I should be) is the fact that it is quite time consuming to simply keep up. Case in point: I have a perfectly fabulous blog that lies dusty in wait of updating; I own a cell phone (minus bells and whistles) that I rarely use other than as an alarm clock; and I have the tiniest mp3 player with AM/FM tuner available, but I can't bear to take the time to upload/download (whatever) music, so AM/FM it is.

What I am saying is, each week another new tool emerges and the one you spent hours mastering the week prior falls by the way side. OR even worse, you forget your user name and password because, well...you just have so many darn places to check and update and reply. I guess it sort of reminds me of "busy work" in grade school. I always hated busy work!

Anyway, now that I have gotten that off my chest, let me just say that I am not a complete curmudgeon. I do see how wonderful some of these tools can be and how helpful they can be to connect us, as librarians, to our patrons, students, clients, whatever they are calling them this week. However, I also see how much time is wasted by my personal friends and family members using some of these tools, and because of that I firmly believe I have a bit of technophobia (to go along with my OCD...LOL...JK :-) See I can have fun 2.0 style.

From my perspective, the appropriate use of 2.0 tools is not "wow that's neat, although it has no relevant purpose...let's implement it anyway." I truly feel that these tools are most useful to librarians and patrons, when they provide a solution for an existing problem. I don't believe that the answer to everything is a blog or a wiki.

So, if I have such interesting feeling about tools 2.0, why am I completing the 23 things? Well, mainly, because I really didn't want to, but I know that the only way to find things that work is to experiment with them. Now, you won't see me on Facebook...I have really strong feelings about that one, but I plan to immerse myself (for the next couple of months anyway) in the library technologies of tomorrow by keeping an open and creative mind and completing most of the 23.

Wish me luck,
SB