#15 Everything 2.0

Do libraries have a place in a 2.0 world? Yes I absolutely think they do.

Where will that place be? Hopefully right in the middle of things but I suspect for some libraries they will end up at the very edge of a farflung galaxy in the backblocks (to badly paraphrase Douglas Adams).

What will that place look like? My guess would be that my place won't look anything like yours, as it shouldn't if we are serving our communities properly.

Library 2.0 is really just a ramped up version of what libraries have been doing since the dawn of time - organising stuff so people can find and use it, keeping stuff so it is available to the next generation and helping people create new stuff (from recipes to research). The difference now is that the world has got smaller, the amount of stuff has got bigger and literally everyone is organising, keeping and creating.

I think we have some important choices to make about how we face this new world. We can demand that it plays by our rules or we'll go home, we can sit on the sidelines until we've got it worked out (by which time the game will have changed) or we can get in there and play along. If we aren't part of the game it will change without us and we will lose all hope of ever getting back in. That doesn't mean that we all have to in the middle of it but we do have to be open to ideas, giving things a go and cheering on those who are willing to be up the front where the hard knocks are happening.

One of the blogs I read had a great quote: "If you haven't failed you weren't trying hard enough". How sad for us if we didn't even get a 2.0 paper cut.

So let the games begin!!! (just let me go get my floaties, see previous post)