Metro-Atlanta Library Association/SLA Joint Spring Meeting

Web 2.0: Impact on Libraries and Information Centers

Thursday, March 27, 6:00 PM

The Spring joint meeting of the Metro-Atlanta Library Association and Special Libraries Association, Georgia Chapter was held on Thursday, March 27, at the Decatur Public Library. The topic was clearly one of interest to many, as witnessed by the nearly 60 attendees from both organizations. The panelists provided an overview of Web/Library 2.0 technologies, and demonstrated how these are being utilized in library/information center settings. They also described some of the benefits and difficulties of implementing Web 2.0 tools in libraries and information centers.

The panelists included Edward Lomax, Assistant Professor of Information Technology, Georgia State University; Laura Savastinuk, Co-author of "Library 2.0: A Guide to Participatory Library Service" and Assistant Branch Manager at Gwinnett County Public Library, and her colleague Christopher Warren; and Kate Stirk, Librarian, North Georgia Technical College.

The Gwinnett PL team presented first on some of the basic concepts and technologies of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0—the interactive, “social” nature of the tools, the emphasis on feedback, communication in multiple directions, and active user participation, the concept of social networking. Web 2.0 tools frequently change based upon and to adapt to the needs of the users. They also discussed some of the Web/Library 2.0 tools including Blogs, Wikis, Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn (“FaceBook for professionals”), tag clouds, and LibraryThing. LibraryThing and Flickr allow users to tag items and images with terms meaningful to them. LibraryThing and Wikis allow participants to add content, summaries and reviews, capabilities similar to Wikipedia. They also are good venues for event promotion, administrative training, policies, etc. Laura explained the difference and progression in technology and concept from Web 1.0, with its online public access catalogs or OPACs and static Web pages, such as GALILEO, to Web 2.0, where the emphasis is on two- or more way communication among peers and providers, and user contributions to and definition of content.

Kate Stirk gave examples of her hands-on experiences with numerous Web 2.0 tools in the library setting in a lively and entertaining presentation. She discussed her utilization of MySpace for a school events calendar, Blogger.com to promote GALILEO, and YouTube to present short tutorials for students. She also talked about other technologies such as Twitter, RSS feeds, Flickr del.iciou.us, LibraryThing, Surpass, Wikis, and others.

Edward Lomax put all of the tools and technologies of Web 2.0 into a historical perspective of the Internet. He also discussed the concept and techniques of social tagging in more detail, and particularly how they are applied in a K-12 educational context. He discussed the trends and benefits of social tagging, and how the concept derived from the practice of bookmarking. He took us back to the early days of the Internet in libraries, when Gopher and Mosaic transformed into the World Wide Web and browser technologies. He discussed a concept called "Myedna" that will combine folksonomies and social tagging with structured taxonomies for information management in the education sector. Myedna, a "taxonomy-directed folksonomy", will be the basis for a transformation to yet another plane of information sharing and structure on the Web -- Web 3.0 He also touched on the roles librarians and information professionals will play and the skills that will be needed, in summary.

The panelists presented a very informative and interesting view of the world of the Web, its capabilities, technologies and tools and how they are being used today to provide and promote library services. They set the stage for perhaps a future meeting including hands-on demonstrations and more discussion of some of the tools.

Handouts and slides for all of the presentations will soon be available on the SLA Website: http://units.sla.org/chapter/cga/ .

Thanks to EBSCOhost for their generous sponsorship of the meeting, including sandwiches from the Atlanta Bread Company. Thanks also to the staff of the Decatur Public Library for their gracious hospitality. Special thanks to Casey Long, Kay Pinckney, Gardner Neeley, Steven Vincent, Irene McMorland, and others who made this meeting so successful.

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