What is it? Is it a definition or is it actually a social movement?
To me, Web 2.0 is defined as the act of shaping your internet experience. One can simply log onto say Facebook, blogger, and personalize that page (or their corner of the net) with words, images, or content. Web 2.0 is supposed to be a lot different than Web 1.0, but having basically grown up with this movement, I don't see that much difference from the Internet when I first started ten years ago (OH MY GOSH. HAS IT BEEN TEN YEARS?).
When I first started using the internet, I began with Yahoo! Instant Messenger (YIM) to contact my cousin who was about an hour away. He is the one my mom could blame for my interest in the Internet. The customizable experience is completely my own. When I learned how to change mouse cursors, the desktop, icons on the computer, I naturally moved into the YIM world. When YIM started, you were able to customize the IM experience. There were no message wallpapers yet, that would come later, but I could easily change the background of the YIM program, change the icons for when someone was online, offline, busy, etc. I could change the sound. I enjoyed doing this and at one point had the most awesome ReBoot set up.
Then YIM took it away and neither AIM or YIM has brought this fun feature back.
To me, as I read more and more and learn more and more, this is the beginning of Web 2.0. Today, if you watch your teens on the computer, you'll see them go to MySpace and change the background, the codes, almost weekly. They'll send their friends animated GIFS, learn codes for bold, etc. This is an example of Web 2.0.
There are also the social networking sites that actually began with Blogs and Forums (Bulletin Boards). I have been participating in those since I was in high school and actually, I really miss the forum experience I used to have. Those on the forum created a Facebook group but coming out of the shadows for that is sort of hard. I liked being known as the girl moderator in PA. That was all anyone needed to know. Oh. And my likes, dislikes, and that I lived with cats.
Library 2.0 (or what I thought after reading OCLC Web 2.0)
This is a completely different experience for the user than the above. The library has adopted the social networking tools to help enhance the library experience. (Sort of the same as above...).
Libraries have always been and always will be places of knowledge. The only thing is how will the library present that knowledge. In the OCLC article, one of the authors brought up that libraries need to adapt to the Web 2.0 movement. If we don't, we won't survive, yet isn't the Web 2.0 movement of tagging, cataloging, right up the librarian's alley? Why aren't librarians the ones starting these trends? Why did NON-librarians create LibraryThing, tagging?
The OCLC article brings up so many good points. Web 2.0 is a "collective intelligence." Haven't libraries always been this way housing books and magazines that exists? Why haven't librarians moved past the "just in case" scenario? Everything is available online and our teens and college students are taking full advantage of these things when they procrastinate. Also, more likely than not you can fine a questionably legal copy of whatever you're looking for.
Eitherway, isn't the library a "collective intelligence"? All we're doing is moving along into a differetn format. Libraries will always house books in my opinion, but what we house vs what is online will be determined by librarirans.
I finish this section out with this GREAT quote:
What are libraries? Libraries are not just collections of documents and books, they are conversations, they are convocations of people, ideas, and artifacts in dynamic exchange. Libraries are not merely inare communities, they communities: they preserve and promote community memories; they provide mentors not only for the exploration of stored memory, but also for the creation of new artifacts of memory. What was the library of the past? A symbol of a society that cared about its attainments, that treasured ideas, that looked ahead multiple generations. Librarians were stewards, trainers, intimate with the knowledge base and the minds who produced it. Librarians today are not just inventory management biobots: they are people with a unique understanding of the documents they compile and catalog, and the relationships among those documents.
School Library 2.0 (or what I thought after reading SLJ's Web 2.0 Article)
Having picked up my School Librarian K-12 certificate, I try to keep my "ear to the ground" for anything related to schools and information literacy (though, we practice it just as much as it is taught in the class room).
School Library Media Specialists (for that is their current title) have been using Web 2.0 for a while now with book blogs, podcasts, and pathfinders (think delicious list, but in paper). They have been ahead of the curve concerning 2.0 technology. The most interesting quote I found, which public librarians NEED to be aware of is this:
Still other events taking place in the world are pushing us toward change. School libraries are becoming marginalized by state and federal regulations. The No Child Left Behind Act, for example, does not recognize librarians as teachers. Moreover, the “65 percent solution,” an education budget formula being enacted by many states, also jeopardizes library funding. Add to this the “Google effect,” which has schools questioning the relevancy of libraries in an online world, and we are in real trouble.
The google effect is something we need to watch out for.
Final Thoughts
Something I have found interesting with this sudden "embrace" of Web 2.0 technologies in the library is that librarians are readily throwing their identities on the net. I haven't seen anything point this out but with the advent of MySpace and Facebook, I'm surprised at how readily we tell our lives on the Internet.
When I was started, I was told to keep my identity a secret. I still follow these guidelines that were set for me (and re-evaluated by me). It took me a little to start using Facebook and at first with a blury profile picture. I actually chose Facebook over MySpace because my Xanga did the same thing as that one and FB was different. I also looked at how secure FB could be and set the settings up somewhat high. Mind you, I hear all the time that everything you do can and is probably tracked. Abrams comment that "everything you said or write will probably be on the net by 2013." This scares me. I don't know why this doesn't scare anyone else, but it does me. I like to think that my journal (good old books) will stay private until after I'm dead. I'd also like to think that the convos between the Philosophical Musician (my fiance) and I will disappear into the memories of our minds.
I like the Web 2.0 movement. Sometimes I wish there was more customizations out there, but I like what's there. What I'm concerned about is how readily we throw our identities into this great collaborative pool that is the Internet.
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