Friday, July 20, 2007

Week 6, Thing 15

The perspectives on Web 2.0 and the future of libraries were interesting and yet left me feeling a bit uncomfortable. Although this course has been a real eye-opener for me, it's been a case of adding new skills that will be used within the context of the existing library framework. We are not "post print" and hopefully never will be. All web based technologies are simply too ephemeral to carry on the library mission to "preserve and promote community memories". My introduction to library service was the Historical Society of Pennsylvania which is an archive with 16 million documents and images. Web 2.0 can assist in access to such collections but never replace them. Likewise, the service of a bookmobile in the very rural district where I now work remains a "hard copy" service. I certainly will use Web 2.0 to assist patrons but I will also keep all of those "just in case" books the collection needs to be complete. In fact, I just added a large number of biographies and histories that our local high school thought it no longer needed. There have been quite a few checkouts of this "just in case" material.