For me the key to the successful use of Web 2.0 technologies is, as Kelly Gardiner so ably puts it, "adapting to users’ workflows, rather than forcing them to work around us".
In that vein, there's something that really puzzles me...
We know we constantly get questions about law and government resources, immigration, sheet music etc etc. We're frustrated because the public "only want to use the free internet", not our fabulous resources, (and we know that even when they want to use the resources, due to the vastness of the collections, appropriate sources can be hard to find). But while we produce helpful and detailed research guides for staff, for the most part we haven't made these available to the public.
Why?
Because we're afraid that they might not need us any more? Because, underneath it all, we don't really want the hoi polloi messing up our nicely ordered shelves? Because we've been afraid that we couldn't keep them updated? Apart from the last reason (which will hopefully be irrelevant after we are trained to upload and edit content ourselves), these excuses do not make sense to me.
I feel like that our role is to guide people in their search and advise them on the best/most appropriate resources to use. Surely online research guides are an obvious way to do this? I think that interactive, dynamic, easily update-able online guides would both promote our knowledge and help patrons immeasurably. They can only help to get people using the collections again. And when we've already got the content sitting on our disc drives, they would not be particularly difficult to create.
Another way that we could present information about the collections to users at their point of need would be to make more use of portlets or widgets, as I've mentioned previously. For example, we could produce a widget that presents a constantly updated/scrolling list of new books/ejournal articles about Australian history. Any interested webmaster could add this to their website (e.g. that of a historical society). Individuals interested in the topic could add the same widget to their iGoogle login page. Indeed, the same widget could be used on one of the aforementioned research guides as well. This would promote the use of these new acquisitions, not to mention impress potential patrons and encourage them to visit the library or use our online resources. It also prevents user having to wade through mountains of information that they don't need to know, or having to click through to our website to start their search.On a lighter note, I'll end with 3 useful thoughts from library futurist Stephen Abram:
We musn’t be afraid to experiment and try new things - if we don't play with new technologies we don't learn quickly enough.
However...when we study things to death we forget that death was not our original goal! Sometimes we just need to jump in and try things .
There will be refuseniks. While we should listen to their concerns, and take into account their previous experiences, we should also remember this - in 1956 an article was published in an eminent library journal on why reference librarians shouldn't use the newfangled device called...the telephone.
And it would be churlish not to also thank all of the developers who've created the wonders that are WYSIWYG widgets, wikis, weblogs et al. I can remember back in high school (not too many years ago!) having to labouriously write websites in HTML and I am constantly amazed at how far we've come in such a short amount of time. It really does seem that the possibilities are endless, and I'm looking forward immensely to seeing how these technologies can be adapted to best serve our patrons.
