The tools of Web 2.0 create and encourage conversations that are playing out every day in every way about all manner of things. People want to talk to each other, and the Web has enabled conversations like never before. Remember your first e-mail discussion list? Your first post and subsequent discussion at an online forum? I certainly remember mine. In 1994 I discovered a thriving online community focused on Twin Peaks and a newly forming Stevie Nicks fandom community. Who knew that now we'd find a community and an ongoing conversation for practically every subject under the sun, as well as more ways to have those conversations in virtual spaces?

A recent personal experience shows that today's online conversations do not need to be organized or planned. Losing my 13-year-old yellow Labrador Jake on June 18, 2007, was a notably sad occasion that fell within a day of defending my dissertation. In dealing with situation, I took much solace from sharing Jake's story via Flickr. I honored Jake's passing in a post called “A Pink Blanket” (see figure 10), and the comments and “favoriting” that occurred on that post speak volumes about the power of conversation in the new Web.

Karen Schneider found the words I couldn't find that day to express what was happening. Her post on her blog, Free Range Librarian, was called “Pets, Social Software, and Unconditional Love”:

Pets bring out the best in us: in exchange for unconditional love, they tease out our deep capacity to care for others and our abilities to parent. The tragedy of pets is that if we are lucky we outlive them, but the triumph is that pets teach us again and again the sweet brevity of life. Michael has documented all of this on Flickr—the love and the grief and the brevity—and he and I, and all of us, are closer for it.¹

A new level of discourse is taking place online, and it will take place with or without you. Find ways to participate. Give folks a place to “talk” in your online realm. It might be something as snazzy as the SOPAC at Ann Arbor or Hennepin County Public Library's catalog comments, or it might be simply a “What's New” blog for your library on Blogger or Wordpress with comments turned on.

I was sitting in my hotel room in Iowa last October, the day a small plane crashed into a New York City high rise. CNN was covering the story and used a stream of incoming images uploaded to Flickr to show the scene. This signaled yet another milestone on the road toward convergence: devices, technology, societal shift, media, and conversations.

The Convergence Culture Consortium site at MIT offers this definition:

Convergence describes a process rather than an endpoint. More than just technological consolidation, the process of convergence is distinguished by changing consumer flows through the media landscape. It represents a tectonic shift that has altered the relationship between existing technologies, industries, markets, genres and audiences. This altered relationship privileges “expressions” over “impressions”; engaged consumers draw together information across multiple media experiences creating new touchpoints for your brands. Convergence culture calls for a re-negotiation of the expectations of media content producers and advertisers, of media producers and audiences.²

Into a New World of Librarianship

Sharpen these skills for Librarian 2.0

One of the principles I would add to the Library 2.0 meme is that “the Library is human” because it makes the library a social and emotionally engaging center for learning and experience. Librarian 2.0, then, is the “strategy guide” for helping users find information, gather knowledge and create content. The most important traits of Librarian 2.0 include:

• Librarian 2.0 plans for their users. This librarian bases all planning and proposals for services, materials and outreach on user needs and wants. User- centered libraries break down barriers and allow users access wherever they are: home, work, commuting, school, or at the library. This involves users from the get go in planning and launching services based on their needs. This librarian asks what new technologies or new materials users need. This librarian proposes building projects and involves users in designing those places. This librarian does not create policies and procedures that impede users' access to the library. This librarian tells users how resources and funds will be expended. Decisions and plans are discussed in open forums and comments are answered. This makes the library transparent.
• Librarian 2.0 embraces Web 2.0 tools. This librarian recognizes how services might be enhanced by the Read/Write web and how new services might be born in a climate of collaboration. This librarian uses Instant Messaging to meet users in their space online, builds Weblogs and wikis as resources to further the mission of the library, and mashes up content via API (Application Program Interface) to build useful Web sites. A Google map mash up of local libraries created by Chicago librarians is one such instance of building tools via new resources. Other librarians creating MySpace profiles and participating in other thriving communities build connections online where their users live.
• Librarian 2.0 controls technolust. This librarian does not buy technology for the sake of technology. “Techno-worship” does not exist here. Without a firm foundation in the mission and goals of the institution, new technologies are not implemented for the sake of coolness and status. Technology is put to the test: Does it meet the users' need in a new or improved way? Does it create a useful service for putting users together with the information and experience they seek? These are some of the questions this librarian asks when planning for technology. This librarian creates and nurtures a living, breathing technology plan.
• Librarian 2.0 makes good, yet fast decisions. This librarian recognizes how quickly the world and library users change with advancing technology.Project timelines that stretch on for months simply do not work in Library 2.0 thinking. Perpetual beta works well for the library's Web presence. This librarian redesigns for ease of use, user involvement and easily added/re-configured pieces. This librarian brings evidence to the table for planning sessions and decision-making, such as recent studies from Pew, articles from professional and scholarly journals and a synthesis of on topic postings from the biblioblogosphere.
• Librarian 2.0 is a trendspotter. This librarian seeks out information and news that may impact future services. This librarian has read the OCLC Pattern Recognition and User Perception reports and uses them in planning. This librarian uses The Cluetrain Manifesto and realizes that networked markets are library users as well and that honest, human conversations need to take place within their institution, virtually and in physical space. This librarian reads outside the profession and watches for the impact of technology on users and new thinking on business, because it is, in fact, related.
• Librarian 2.0 gets content. This librarian understands that the future of libraries will be guided by how users access, consume and create content. Content is a conversation as well and librarians should participate. Users will create their own mash ups, remixes and original expressions and should be able to do so at the library or via the library's resources. This librarian will help users become their own programming director for all of the content available to them.

Librarian 2.0 also listens to staff and users when planning, tells the stories of successes and failures, learns from both, celebrates those successes, allows staff time to play and learn, and never stops dreaming about the best library services.

Reprinted from OCLC NextSpace, no. 2 (Spring 2006), with permission

Pay close attention to the work of Henry Jenkins, including his recent book Convergence Culture. I'm still pondering his ideas and have a ways to go to completely understand the implications and impact of the interaction of people with these new and shifting methods of mass communication. I'm also looking at how to incorporate such innovative thinking into the classes I teach at Dominican University GSLIS. From Slashdot comes a review of Convergence Culture with a useful example for understanding this phenomenon:

In one example, he follows the progression of the Harry Potter franchise after Warner Brothers purchased the film rights. In the interest of protecting their trademark, the studio sent out cease-and-desist letters to an online network of pre/teen [largely] girls who had been writing and sharing stories about Harry Potter as a way of learning to improve their writing skills. Rather than desisting, they coordinated a global protest that became a major P.R. headache for Warner Brothers—who ultimately had to back down.³

In my Tech Trends talks, I've used an image of the Apple iPhone for this point. I can make a joke or two about one of my favorite subjects, which I've been addressing for a long time—technolust. When it comes to me and the iPhone, personal technolust is okay, but institutional technolust is something to keep in check. It also means something more. The iPod on some level changed the world. The iPhone may as well: user interface, ease of use, pulling together a seamless experience of voice, data, Web. Watch closely.

From MacWorld comes “Analysis: iPhone and the Emergence of Convergence,” in which Glenn Fleischmann writes:

The next step beyond converged calling is convergence of all devices…. For instance, if you're carrying a suspiciously small, touch-sensitive video player—a forthcoming device made by a company based in Cupertino, Calif., say—you could be watching streaming, on-demand video while riding a train home from work using the on-board Wi-Fi now showing up on many transit systems.

As you get off the train, the device switches, without noticeable stutter, to the high-speed cell network. The quality of the video drops down as does the audio, but it doesn't drop. You walk home, your eyes still locked on the screen, and you step in the door, plop this mystery device in a dock attached to your high-definition television, and the service switches over to the 50 Mbps fiber connection to your home, and the video continues, but now in 1080p with 5.1 surround sound.⁴

At DIY Media, virtual community and technology expert Howard Rheingold, in examining Henry Jenkins's work, observed:

Jenkins noted that the success of Youtube as a business owes as much to amateur contributors like the Chinese Backstreet Boys as it does to the founders—the value of a user-generated content business depends precisely on the popularity, if not the production quality, of content generated by users, and the willingness of these prosumers to alert their social networks to new cultural discoveries.⁶

Today we have YouTube celebrities famous for their down-home content creation with a video camera, webcam, or cell phone. Who knew that launching a blog, podcast, videocast, or some other content-producing mechanism could lead to fame and fortune in the converged world?

As far as I am concerned, tens of thousands of people who are actively creating new stuff are more interesting than millions of more passive participants.

Howard Rheingold, OCLC Symposium, ALA Midwinter Meeting, Seattle, WA, Jan. 19–24, 2007.

In my Tech Trends talks, I use an example from The Church of the Customer Blog, which highlights a trip to a messy Kohl's department store that was documented and blogged via a cell phone. We've entered the age of the citizen journalist who can report from practically anywhere a cellular or wifi signal can reach. For example, Ann Arbor has a Superpatron, a library-centered adaptation of Eric von Hippel's notion of “Lead Users”⁷ Chicago Public Library now has CPL Patron, a blog dedicated to exploring the services of CPL. Author Chris Rios writes on his About Page:

The growth of the read/write web has also influenced strategic directions. New technologies enable anyone to create and publish content to the web. Initially, users mostly published text. However, digital cameras, video cameras, GarageBand, Flickr, YouTube, and a host of other software allow ordinary people to create a variety of content and post it to the web. This dramatically changes the types of software that libraries need to support their computing facilities. For example, the University of Minnesota has made web log software available to faculty, staff, and students. In academic libraries, this technology makes it easier for faculty to self-publish and self-archive their materials, everything from books and articles to data sets and lectures. Libraries can help promote better scholarly communication by facilitating this process—providing systems and space to store content and education for faculty on how to produce and self-publish materials.

Karen Coombs, “Planning for Now and Then,” netConnect, Oct. 15, 2006, www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6375463.html

I love CPL and I am constantly trying to find new and better ways to use its resources to their fullest. I have also found myself frustrated by certain aspects of its functions and services and feel that there is definitely room for improvement. My hope is that employees at CPL will read this blog and a discussion will ensue about what practices are currently working and what practices could be changed or implemented to improve services. I am also hoping that other patrons will read this site and say to themselves, “Hey! That's a good idea!” and request those services from CPL, or give CPL that pat on the back it needs every once and while. Buy your local branch librarians a gift or bake them some cookies. (It's good to be nice to your local librarian.) If you are also a CPL patron please send in your stories (good and bad) and suggestions and I'll be sure to post them up on this blog.⁸

Our trends certainly are feeding into each other! In the course of his citizen journalism, Rios is looking to create a conversation space for folks who use the CPL. My hope is librarians and staff of CPL would participate as well.

At the OCLC Blog “It's All Good,” Alane Wilson reported on the Top 5 trends identified by trendwatching.com , including this one:

Transparency Tyranny

As camera and video phones are becoming both ubiquitous and more powerful, reviews of anything and everything will go multimedia. The impact? Well, a picture says more than a thousand words, and a video says more than a thousand pictures ;-) EVERYTHING brands do or don't do will end up on YouTube.com, or on an undoubtedly soon to be launched YouTube-clone dedicated to product reviews.”⁹

Here's the thing: 156 million Americans use high-speed cell phone networks that allow them to take pictures like this and post them immediately to a blog where, naturally, they can spread.

Ben McConnell, “Not-So-Secret Shopper,” Church of the Customer Blog, Jan. 12, 2007, www.churchofthecustomer.com/blog/2007/01/notsosecret_sho.html

This is the social trend. People want to make connections. One way to do that is online. People want to express their humanity. As the example of my dear old dog Jake illustrates, there is support not only in the real world of family and friends but in the online world as well. And some of these ties can be just as strong or fulfill a need at exactly the right moment.

Fred Stutzman, a researcher and student at UNC's Info Science school, argues that in 2007 we'll see social networking grow and change, especially with thriving, established sites like eBay:

As the web goes social, individuals in these communities want to meet, learn about, learn from or even date fellow members of these communities. Therefore, it makes a lot of sense for established communities to introduce social and profile aspects to their communities. First, it is a move that will get tech pundits talking, and the cluetrain folks applauding, as it embraces social and conversational aspects of community. Second, it will increase engagement between customers, therefore increasing the amount of time people will spend on the site. It also increases the amount of social capital individuals invest into their relationship with the content site, ultimately making individuals ambassadors of the brands into which they invest time.¹⁰

At the Tech Trends session at the 2007 Ontario Library Association Super Conference in Toronto, John Blyberg, head of Technology and Digital Initiatives at Darien Library, Darien, Connecticut, and blogger, spoke so eloquently about openness and sharing:

Openness is the new trend. It's an open world. … are you unable or unwilling to adapt? Sharing content, thoughts and ideas should be the norm.¹¹

I couldn't agree more. I am fascinated to watch open-source software catch on more and more in libraries. For more on this topic, see Casey Bisson's issue of Library Technology Reports, “Open-Source Software for Libraries.”¹²

Openness and sharing lead to transparency. Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, blogged in late 2006 about “radical transparency”: “Perhaps the most interesting of these [trends] is the shift from secrecy to transparency….” Anderson also addressed the “what happens in the company stays in the company” idea: “Aside from some special exemptions,” he noted, “such as conferences where those employees trusted enough to go chatted guardedly with outsiders, employees were cautioned that what happened at work should stay at work. Loose lips sink ships, etc.”¹³

Users and their knowledge have the ability to reshape library services, but libraries must first change the way they craft their services and tools so that users have a clear and open avenue on which to communicate and participate.

Michael Casey, Technology Services Division Director, Gwinnett County Public Library, e-mail interview by the author, July 5, 2007

Along the same lines, the work of David Weinberger continues to inspire and provoke my thinking. His chapter in The Cluetrain Manifesto, “The Hyperlinked Organization,” speaks to libraries perfectly. Open discussions, open planning, and open organizations will hopefully be the mantra of libraries that want to be the best at what they do. As I wrote a few months ago:

This isn't Vegas folks. And it certainly isn't the Pentagon. The fact that we are building collections and creating services for our users means we should be letting these folks know what we are doing and how we are spending their money. If you are doing it well, you can tell your users a mighty fine story of what benefits and value the library offers. If you are afraid to tell them, you have a problem. Go back and rethink please. I'll wait right here.¹⁴

Many of my Library 2.0 talks are subtitled “Planning, People & Participation” because although all three are key, participation makes the true difference. Folks have found that on the Web they can participate in creating content that enhances our lives: rating hotels, noting fabulous dining places, sharing book reviews, etc. The best libraries will recognize participation should carry over into their Web presence as well. A 2.0 tool, such as tagging, allows folks to participate in shaping the library's resources.

For one example, don't miss the excellent post by Ryan Deschamps, blogger at The Other Librarian, entitled “My Top-Ten Library 2.0 ‘No-Brainers,’” which includes this wisdom:

Have a public blog and allow comments.

Why is it L2?

Because it invites participation, fair and simple.

Why would my users want it?

Lots of reasons, including but not limited to 1) wanting and input on their library 2) getting answer to questions 3) getting to read interesting comments and how they are responded to 4) feeling like your website is not an automaton but that there are actually people running the show and 5) engaging other library-people in a discussion about their favorite place.

Moderate it all you want, but we are at the age where you need a blog with commenting power.¹⁶

I feel fortunate that Michael Casey and I have had many opportunities to discuss Library 2.0 in our Library Journal column and via the blogosphere. My favorite parts of those discussions have been about the emotional, personal aspects of Library 2.0, which include:

• Library 2.0 encourages the heart. As we reach out to our users, we remember all of the folks we serve. We create experiences for them.
• Library 2.0 will be a meeting place, either online or in the physical world, where the emotional needs of users will be fulfilled through entertainment, information, and the ability to add their own creations to the Long Tail of content.
• Library 2.0 is human. Users will see the face of the library, no matter how they access its services. Librarians will guide them via electronic methods as well as in person. Versed in the social tools, able to roll with each wave of change, these librarians will encourage and educate future users.

What types of experience do you offer? What types do you seek out? Recently, Stephen Abram pointed out Stephanie Weaver's “8 Steps to Better Experiences” at his blog, Stephen's Lighthouse:

1. Invitation
2. Welcome
3. Orientation
4. Comfort
5. Communication
6. Sensation
7. Common sense
8. Finale¹⁷

How well do the in-person and online experiences we offer our users shape up? What barriers are you putting up to a good experience for library users? Online, we'll see more people seek out experience as part of their Web surfing. At his blog Unit Structures, Fred Stutzman looked ahead at what 2007 might bring in the realm of social networking. He forecast a vision of community engagement via the Web:

Community will emerge around shared experience. YouTube is a shared experience. You send me a video, I watch it, we talk about it. Millions of people of all ages do this every day. The social web is one of shared experiences, and video is a prime example of this phenomenon. Over the next year, we'll find lots of new ways to have shared social experiences, and there's a good chance that rich media will be centric to these experiences.¹⁸

Do you seek experience with new technologies and new ways of providing service? It's a good way to learn and ponder how new technologies might improve library services and how new communities might benefit from a library presence.

One trend to very aware of is the innovations within the library catalog, including the addition of social features. Since my last issue of Library Technology Reports, the library world has seen advancements in three notable projects: the Social OPAC at Ann Arbor District Library (AADL), the award-winning WP OPAC (now known as Scriblio), and the use of Library Thing, an SNS devoted to cataloging one's personal library of books and media, into the library setting.

Here are some steps you can take now to begin using the ideas in this chapter:

• Use this list of trends to jump-start a staff meeting about emerging technologies. Talk about what people are doing with the Web, their devices, and their time. Look for examples in your community, campus, school, or organization. Then look for ways to participate!
• Form an emerging technology committee to make this work ongoing. Rotate all levels of staff on and off the group to give a diversity of perspectives and voices. Blog meeting minutes, action items, and next steps.
• Read outside the field to monitor trends: Wired, Technology Review, Business 2.0, and Fast Company might be useful periodicals to circulate to the emerging tech team.
• Start a Learning 2.0 program. (See chapter 8 for more on Learning 2.0.)

Resources

AADL.org Goes Social www.blyberg.net/2007/01/21/aadlorg-goes-social

Ann Arbor's Superpatron www.superpatron.com

Beyond Brown Paper http://beyondbrownpaper.plymouth.edu/browse

Blyberg.net Files for Download www.blyberg.net/files

CPL Patron http://cplpatron.crios.info

The Hyperlinked Organization www.cluetrain.com/book/hyperorg.html

ImageChef www.imagechef.com

Image Generator Links www.imagegenerator.org

iPod Billboard Sign Generator www.redkid.net/generator/billboard/purplesign.php

Librarians Who LibraryThing www.librarything.com/groups/librarianswholibrar

LibraryThing http://www.librarything.com

On the 2.0 Job Description, Part 1 www.techsource.ala.org/blog/2006/03/on-the-20-job-description-part-1.html

On the 2.0 Job Description, Part 2 www.techsource.ala.org/blog/2006/04/on-the-20-job-description-part-2-lis-students-in-a-20-world.html

On the 2.0 Job Description, Part 3 www.techsource.ala.org/blog/2006/12/desperately-seeking-the-adaptive-librarian-on-the-20-job-description-part-3.html

PSU's Casey Bisson Wins Mellon Award www.plymouth.edu/thirdtier/fullstory.phtml?number=5224

Scriblio http://about.scriblio.net

Ten Techie Things for Librarians 2006 http://tametheweb.com/2006/02/ten_techie_things_for_libraria_1.html

Twelve Techie Things for Librarians 2005 http://tametheweb.com/2005/01/twelve_techie_things_for_libra.html

Warning Label generator www.warninglabelgenerator.com