week 7: a tagging we shall go!

Almost everyone I know uses delicious (I can never remember where the dots go) I have not had a chance to really check it out before now. I added a billion things to Bloglines and have a couple other web places I visit, but I think as a library something like this would be really useful. Imagine having an event on say, alligators, and using delicious to find links on gators or Florida wildlife so kids could look up information before and after. There is only so much you can pass on to kids in an hour or so, right? Something like this would allow them to browse many other resources. Or, for genealogy you could post a tag focusing on census records, local town pages that might have history, and then the patron could use delicious to search along as their whim, almost like a wiki, going from tag idea to idea.

I use tags on my personal blog and if I need to reference a post on something in the past, all I have to do is click the "crafts" tag or "dolls" tag. Tags are a great way to give access to a group of related posts or links without a lot of work organizing them.

With technocrati, you could customize a library blog with tags so people looking up "Florida libraries" or "libraries with youth programs" would find yours easily. If you had specialized blogs, like a "collections" blog listing new books, you could then direct people to that as well.

Wendy Schultz' article onLibrary 2.0 and beyond was interesting. Personally I don't think I would go for a virtual library, but with things like Second Life and such I can see how it would appeal to others. I think, however, there is just something in holding a book, the weight of it in your hands, the turning of pages as you lose yourself within, that a virtual world couldn't replicate. Perhaps in a Library 4.0 we would be equipped with fake "books" that plug into our USB port and get filled with whatever text we want.

John Riemer's article on bibliographic information was pretty interesting as well. I know our own electronic resources get under utilized, and I think it's just because patrons don't know about them. Sure, as college students we know the pros of researching online journals, but say a mother is looking for a medical study on her child's cold medicine. She wouldn't think to go to an online journal, I'm sure. Yet connecting all the catalogs and resources together would allow her to find that with appropiate tags. Of course, tagging everything would take a lot of manpower.

I highly disagree with Stephen's Librarian 2.0 assessment that patrons should be informed and involved in all decisions for the library. Getting their opinions and feelings for what they like in the collection, what they'd like to see improve or change, and feedback which allows us to form our own decisions is very important! However, the same thing that makes the library great - its diverse scope, mixing of communities and ideas -- would be a hinderance if patrons made decisions on how resources were used or funds allocated.

If you say have a hundred dollars and offer to buy a group of new books, one person might want the newest hardcovers in fiction. Another might suggest some older paperbacks to get the most of the money. Yet another patron might want to invest more in your special collection. Someone else might argue that more Spanish books are needed. They all have admirable and important passions, but having so many people like this could lead to confusion and perhaps even resentment if a patron feels another is being favored. Librarians and other employees stay in touch with what is popular in general, through their patrons as well as the marketplace. Who knows? Using that hundred to fund something out of left field might bring in a whole new patron set you didn't know existed!

This is why the "library 2.0" is important, you can reach those who don't usually make it down to the physical library and bring in new materials and programs in order to serve them too while keeping your current patron base.