Matthew Hodgson is now contributing to social computing magazine. The two posts so far are reprints from his blog, and hopefully this will continue.
One of his articles is on Library 2.0. I left a comment on it that probably needs some expansion. My comment was:
Hi Matt, good posting and good to see it exposed to a wider audience. I think that this discussion needs input from the LIS community - but it also needs discussion outside the Library. To me, Library 2.0 is about enabling access rather than loosening control - and while these two aims are not inconsistent, I think that they are different enough to be exposed to a wider audience. Cheers, Andrew
Let me repeat: enabling access to information is not just about loosening control - it is a total 180-degree paradigm shift. It goes from “we will decide where and how people access the information” (knowledge management 1.0) to “We will start the dissemination process and only intervene when absolutely necessary” (knowledge management 2.0).
Some LIS professionals see Library 2.0 as increased access to catalogues and other indexes. This is loosening control, but does it enable access? I would argue that it does not if those catalogues are only available to other libraries, and only where a fee is charged for access. Make the catalogues free - in most cases, public money paid for them. Make them free. Not only that, make them accessible via an easy-to-use API - Amazon does this. When I told Matthew that to me, Amazon is Library 2.0, I was only half joking - and the more I think about it, the closer it gets to my ideal.
I am not an LIS professional - I am an information architect that uses some LIS techniques to get through my working day. I believe that the Library 2.0 discussion belongs to all of us - and that we need to get it out of the library.
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