Library 2.0: A Guide to Participatory Library Service

Citation

Schallier, W. (2008), "Library 2.0: A Guide to Participatory Library Service", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 42 No. 1, pp. 85-86. https://doi.org/10.1108/00330330810851672

Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 are hot topics in the library world. I think there are few libraries that are not experimenting with at least one Library 2.0 tool, like blogs, wikis, RSS, social bookmarking, podcasts, instant messaging, social networking, photo sharing, etc.

Is it a good idea to write a book about the Library 2.0 phenomenon? Whatever you write, it will be almost immediately out of date. The authors of this book seem to have foreseen this and set up a website (www.librarychange.com; last visited 31 October 2007), which “will serve as a source of supplemental information for the book” (p. xix). In reality, this website does not contain much extra content, is hardly updated and is not the active (or collaborative) forum you could expect from an information source about this topic. The website contains a blog (only four messages from March 2007 until October 31st), a list of Library 2.0 links and, of course, information about the authors and how to order the book – but not much more than this.

In the foreword Michael Stephens promises the reader to “discover the thinking behind Library 2.0 and its implementation, from user‐centred planning to the need for constant evaluation” (p. xvi). Indeed, the book is much more than a story about Library 2.0 technology. The authors rightly underline that Library 2.0 is, in essence, an attitude, a readiness, a service model for constant change and user empowerment. The world changes rapidly and so do our customers' needs, so the library has to find a structural way to answer these expectations and to translate users' feedback into new solutions and new services. This is the first and most important step: a modern library has to be prepared to review, update and even cancel products and services.

To do so, the library needs a plan, a strategic plan to cope with those constantly changing customer demands. The book gives a systematic and quite complete overview of the necessary ingredients of such a plan. Concrete suggestions and examples illustrate the whole. This makes it a great reading for every librarian looking for fresh ideas in order to make the services of his/her library more relevant to the users' needs.

The book is particularly inspiring for library managers, who want to introduce change as a natural part of their organisation. It answers questions like how to stimulate library staff to be open to new ideas and to participate in innovation, how to deal with difficulties that can be expected, how to sell all these innovative plans to administrators and reconcile them with their demand for greater efficiency, and many other aspects. The book demonstrates how Library 2.0 can be an opportunity to state a clear mission, to assess services on a regular basis, to redefine priorities and to communicate better to customers. Moreover, Library 2.0 is not only a tool for setting up better services for customers, it can also facilitate the internal functioning of the library.

The book refers on several occasions to the results of an online survey about library change conducted amongst librarians and library managers. This material has the benefit of making the whole discussion of Library 2.0 vivid and recognisable to the reader. A lot of interesting websites are cited. An overview can be found as an appendix in the book and on the website. Again, this is a quite static and old‐fashioned approach for a book about Library 2.0. What I personally would have liked and what would have been a good illustration of Library 2.0, was to offer the reader access to an account on, let's say del.icio.us, from which he/she could add the internet links cited in the book to his/her own account.

So, finally, is it good to have a book about Library 2.0? In this case it is. Library 2.0: A Guide to Participatory Library Service succeeds in transferring to the reader the spirit of Library 2.0 and the fun of constant experimentation. It is written in an enthusiastic way and it almost reads with the same pleasure as a good old‐fashioned novel. It stimulates the readers to develop their own ideas. This could be the reason why the book is still on paper: you can almost not resist marking phrases and writing down comments in the book, in pencil.

However, it is a pity that the typical Library 2.0 tools, like social book‐marking and blogs, which, if applied to this book, could not only illustrate but also add value to it, remain absent. With little effort, the authors could have made this stimulating book so much more interesting.