I shall keep my thoughts on this vast topic limited to a few brief comments on the relationship of 2.0 to Interlibrary Loan, aka Resource Sharing. At the recent
Northwest Interlibrary Loan and Resource Sharing Conference, the keynote speaker was Dr. Joseph Janes of the University of Washington. He kicked off the conference (themed
ILL 2.0: tools to meet the demands) with a thought-provoking and amusing presentation that had us rolling in the aisles. Please take a look at his
PowerPoint; too bad I don't have a video of his accompanying performance because he hopped, skipped, & jumped all over the stage, all to drive home his point:
if we do not evolve, we are going to get left in the dust.
As part of the Discovery exercises, I read Chip Nigles' essay entitled
"To more powerful ways to cooperate." He stresses the importance of the Open WorldCat website on several levels. First of all, it does something the WorldCat database cannot do: once a user has established an account, he/she can build (via marking) an entire bibliography, refered to as a "list" on the site, and subsequently share it. What a great tool for students doing a research paper together! In the database, users can only convert one bib record at a time into a citation, then paste them into a Word document to build their bibliography.
In both formats, however, user participation is encouraged (wiki style) using their Review This Item feature. I am proud to say that when this new feature was added to the database, long before the emergence of Open WorldCat , I was among the first to add a very brief plot summary (OCLC #365453) under Add/View Comments! (It is called Public Notes on the website.) There I was, using Web 2.0, without even knowing it!!! Also, Open WorldCat has the easiest social sharing link of all time - simply click on Share It and you can send to Facebook, Del.icio.us, etc.
The next step for ILL at BCL is for our customers to request interlibrary loans from the Open WorldCat site, instead of from the WorldCat database. This is already being done in the Northwest via the experimental WorldCat Local program. Since customers vastly prefer the site to the database, this is coming soon to a library near you! Unless, of course, BCL wants to get left in the dust...
P.S. I would like to hear what my MARC-oriented colleagues think of LibraryThing, in terms of Web 2.0. Can y'all really be that loose?!!
This was the most FUN exercise yet! I could happily generate wacky images all day long... A quick search showed me dozens of other slide show generators; hope you enjoy this one showing my travels around Oregon following the NW ILL Conference.
