NYLA Conference 2006
My unofficial theme for this conference was ‘Emerging Technologies’. I got to thinking about that phrase and why it makes me uncomfortable. For one, I can talk about technologies emerging, but the fact is that if I’m talking about them at all, it is because they’ve been out for a while and people are using them, creating a buzz around them until they find me or come up on my radar. That’s just the way it works. As I continue to improve the way that I get hip to new technologies, I realize that the speed at which these technologies ‘emerge’ (or launch) is accelerating and perhaps their cycle of usefulness also continues to get shorter. The real challenge is getting the word out when we continue to see new technologies on the horizon. It’s easy to get distracted enough to breath out and say “Finally, I can talk about everything at once!” But we can’t, and we may never get to say that again.
That’s what I came away with from the talks I heard on the subject of Blogs, Wikis, and ‘Web 2.0’ at the NYLA conference in Saratoga Springs, NY.
Linda Brandon gave a good overview Web 2.0 technologies and how schools across the country are using them as effective, engaging learning tools. Great, and I know we all got a lot out of that message, but how do we anticipate what comes next? What is the direction? More importantly, why should we librarians get involved in these technologies?
Jenny Levine, author of The Shifted Librarian blog, in a lecture that covered much of the same territory, made it clear that social networking technology is not just a good learning tool for teachers and librarians, but an even better advocacy tool. Jenny demonstrated how libraries across the country are soliciting feedback from their users through blogs and Wikis, and how users are getting more out of their library experience by reporting on it displaying it (one user, said Levine, has been displaying their library reserves on his personal website, because his library’s RSS feature allowed him to). The implications for a library’s ability to reach its community, advertise events, programs, and new materials are enormous. But perhaps more importantly as we see ‘Web 2.0’ take hold, the library needs engage in the use of these technologies for their own sake – just to do it – so that it can be ready for the advent of the next wave of web interactivity.
That’s what I came away with from the talks I heard on the subject of Blogs, Wikis, and ‘Web 2.0’ at the NYLA conference in Saratoga Springs, NY.
Linda Brandon gave a good overview Web 2.0 technologies and how schools across the country are using them as effective, engaging learning tools. Great, and I know we all got a lot out of that message, but how do we anticipate what comes next? What is the direction? More importantly, why should we librarians get involved in these technologies?
Jenny Levine, author of The Shifted Librarian blog, in a lecture that covered much of the same territory, made it clear that social networking technology is not just a good learning tool for teachers and librarians, but an even better advocacy tool. Jenny demonstrated how libraries across the country are soliciting feedback from their users through blogs and Wikis, and how users are getting more out of their library experience by reporting on it displaying it (one user, said Levine, has been displaying their library reserves on his personal website, because his library’s RSS feature allowed him to). The implications for a library’s ability to reach its community, advertise events, programs, and new materials are enormous. But perhaps more importantly as we see ‘Web 2.0’ take hold, the library needs engage in the use of these technologies for their own sake – just to do it – so that it can be ready for the advent of the next wave of web interactivity.
posted by Nick at 10:07 AM
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