library 2.0

I had heard of web 2.0 and am embarrassed to say that I did not know what it meant. I let it go until I was told at work that I needed to learn web 2.0. OK, I broke down and ask a co-worker what was web 2.0. Boy, was I relieved to find out that it was things like flickr and blogging, things I was already doing. I don't know everything of course but it was just the name I didn't understand.
Library 2.0 is just as important as web 2.0. If libraries want to keep up and keep customers we need to know what our customer are doing and what they want to do. Last year, I proposed cross training our staff so that every staff member would at least have seen some of these sites. I assigned sites to different staff members to train the rest of us. We also wrote short cheat sheets. On when a customer come to us having a problem on MySpace, any of us can help them. If libraries don't keep out our customer will not continue to use and support us. If we really want to shine we should keep ahead of what the customers are doing and offer services they didn't know they needed yet. I was very pleased to hear that we now have a station to download music or audio books from our virtual branch to Mobile devices at our main branch. This is a great start and the direction that we need to keep moving in.