Paul Reynolds describes himself as:
an Auckland based commentator and thinker on the topics of information access and cultural/techno change.
This morning at the State Library of Western Australia he spoke about The Power of Information: Libraries in the Web 2.0 Environment. A friend who saw Paul speak at the LIANZA 2007 conference recommended that I go along. I did. I was glad. I wish I could have stayed for the afternoon session about Digital Strategies for Museums and Libraries .
If you want to see the colourful notes I took during his talk, they are embedded as a slideshow below, Paul Reynolds at the State Library of Western Australia . They are also in a set on Flickr .
It was a pretty straightforward guide to Web 2.0 as it might affect libraries. Techie bits covered were the Web 2.0 meme map, User Generated Content, Wikis, Tagging and Folksomies, APIs and mashups. His central idea seemed to be how to locate and enhance the digital lives of the people-formally-known-as-the users . He could see a role for us to show them how to use the tools and help them create their own online lives. And unlocking some of our content and making it meaningful.
It was clear that he was concerned about libraries finding their own voices – both for our own online sites and in how we relate to our users. Having kept his own blog private for 6 months while he found the “voice” for it, he obviously approved of a couple of libraries that had done the same before launching their blogs. He compared the MySpace page of one library with its “official” page and suggested that it would be interesting to get the authors of each one in the same room and see whether they had any common ground at all.
I think he was concerned about the lack of energy and oomph of library Facebook groups. They don’t seem to be happening places or very stimulating. (My thought is that the energy on Facebook is still happening in the personal networks via communities-of-choice rather than communities-of-practice . Ambassadors from personal subnetworks visit the professional groups and do business, but wouldn’t want to live there).
Like so many Web 2.0 speakers, he recommended setting up a page like netvibes or igoogle as a cetrepoint for one’s online life. It’s something I just don’t “get”. I just have heaps of tabs open all day and <ALT> <TAB> to the one I want. “In my browser, on the net” feels like a single place to me. I get really annoyed with those starting pages where you have to click away from the window to DO anything – like send a gmail message or read more than just headlines of your RSS feeds.
I admired Paul’s vision of libraries, museums and galleries as loci of curiousity. One of his first points was that curiousity is central to what we do. He seemed to think it worthwhile to find and define a core purpose. He suggested considering what it is that makes someone enter our buildings and say with obvious pleasure “Aaah – this is a library”.
Perth was the start of his tour, so catch him if you can during the next week.
