Web 2.0 perspectives

"but if our own services can't be used without training then it is the services that need to be fixed - not our patrons"
I found this quote very thought provoking. How often have we sat beside our patrons and guided them in the correct way to search our catalogue, or find answers in resources that need set ways of searching. If there is one thing Google has shown is that people can search for information the way they know how - they are not concerned about author first, don't put the, spelling etc. They give it their best shot and expect to land somewhere close to the mark. Intuitive searching is the way of the future. "We need to focus our efforts not on teaching research skills but on eliminating the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need, so they can spend as little time as possible wrestling with lousy search interfaces and as much time as possible actually reading and learning"

The “just in case” collection comments were also very interesting. I still have a tendency to be reluctant to withdraw some items - books that I have found invaluable over the years in answering those tricky questions. But I am finding that I am not using these books anymore - patrons are finding the answers on the web themselves, or I am using the web to find the answers and then comments /bloggs on the relevance of that answer are also found.

The librarian skills for librarianship in a web 2.0 environment make interesting reading. Just how many of these traits have I embraced - how many have we at NSL embraced. Do we make good but fast decisions? Are we a trendspotter? Are we learning from the successes and also the failures of our services. The future library will be an exciting environment in which to work - working, listening to our people to create their LIBRARY