According to Talis the pervasive library would include features like this:
Why can’t information on books and other resources available to borrow appear in online bookstores as an alternative to buying? Equally, why can’t information on books and other resources available to buy appear in library systems as an alternative to waiting for an item that is already on loan or only available via ILL? What role might there be for the library in mediating these choices with or on behalf of the user?
I’m not willing to call this nonsense yet, but. First, why would Amazon want to give it away? Last I heard, it barely turns a profit. Second, and, maybe, more importantly, I’m guessing that the technology to find via an Amazon listing an item from a library able and willing to deliver it requires a far from trivial software application and a vast database. Adding that to the large, on the ground, infrastructure it takes to make just the C/W Mars + Virtual Catalog delivery system work would be hard enough without extending that infrastructure throughout the universe. Heck, making it work throughout New England would be phenomenal. So, what am I missing?
Also, I’m not sure adding Amazon links to items in the catalog offers any significant improvement in ease of use. I mean, how difficult is it to get to Amazon all by yourself? Again, what am I missing?
Does anyone besides me find something kind of sad in Library 2.0? It’s like someone trying to be fashionable but only succeeding in being so-last-season. Finally, what am I missing.
These are just thoughts in progress. I have a vague hunch that Library 2.0 may not be something that changes Patron/Library relations as much as Libray/Supplier channels, the not too sub-text of the Talis article. Considering the source, I’m not surprised.
August 30, 2007 at 12:06 pm
Okay, this guy (Tallis, not you) just doesn’t get it. He is carrying his ideas to an extreme without any thought of the practical. I’m sure he has no daily experience with the realities of a regional book delivery system. Libraries and bookstores clearly have different missions (free provision of information vs. profit) although we deal with many of the same physical items. At this point, what Tallis envisions as the pervasive library runs contrary to the definitions and missions of the organizations he uses as examples.
While I didn’t choose to read this article myself, it sounds like his vision is different from those that I did read. The vision that’s growing in my mind is more one of a different service model, or a different way of presenting our services. One of the hallmarks of Web 2.0 is increased personalization. That’s certainly something that would be possible for libraries to incorporate. We’ve already started, in a way, by preparing personalized reading lists as part of the Readers Advisory services offered in Reference. As I mentioned in another comment, having the web site more interactive would be another way of libraries’ adopting some more Web 2.0 characteristics. Blogs for comments, book reviews, etc. Or some other application. Something so that the communication and information flows both ways. Looking at the way we do things and seeing if it’s still the best way. To me, a big part of Library 2.0 is the mindset – of being open and responsive and investigating how – and if – any of this Web 2. 0 stuff can really apply to libraries – or not.
It does seem a bit as if some folks in library land are trying to hard to appear hip and happening by applying some Web 2.0 stuff to libraries when it may really not be an appropriate library thing. So let’s not open up a page for vacation photos just yet!
August 31, 2007 at 4:04 pm
skylass,
Not only are the missions different, so are the resources. Here’s a circ. perspective: A library’s mission is to share limited resources among a clientèle. It’s what keeps us cheap and what makes us seem so persnickety to some folks. Of course if you don’t want to wait x number of weeks or months to read the latest best seller, you can buy it for yourself. Or if you want something that no library has, (and I often do) again you need to go to a store, on-line or on-the-ground.
When the library has the same reach as Amazon now has, then there will be no need for Amazon at all and we will be living in a socialist paradise. And that’s not going to happen anytime soon.
Seth
October 12, 2007 at 2:14 pm
I don’t know enough to know whether Web 2.0 is sad or not. I’m just enjoying playing with it when I can. Simple as I am.