thursday next

Of all the articles included on tlc's exercise 15, I found Rick Anderson's to be the most appealing. According to Anderson: "In the post-print era, libraries no longer have the monopoly power that they had in the days before the Internet. We have to be a bit more humble in the current environment, and find new ways to bring our services to patrons rather than insisting that they come to us—whether physically or virtually. At a minimum, this means placing library services and content in the user’s preferred environment (i.e., the Web); even better, it means integrating our services into their daily patterns of work, study and play."

I have to say, he makes a compelling argument; of course, I'm already a believer in constantly renewing and revising library services. I'm very excited about integrating new resources, such as a PLS blog, into our library services. I don't, however, always find Library 2.0 to be the most effective method of reaching our community. Instead of being inclusive, communicating with the community at large and expanding our patron base, I often find new technology tools to be a bit exclusive, catering to the tech savvy. The patrons who may need us the most, those who don't know how to navigate the net to find new and essential information, may be left behind if we concentrate too strongly on new library services. A compromise is therefore needed, a blend of services that reach out to all of our patrons. I look forward to seeing how library 2.0 will invigorate existing library services without replacing the most effective method of communicating with our patrons: a friendly chat with their local librarian.