Comments on: Some Vermont library statistics, fyi

By: jessamyn

jessamyn — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 03:08:56 +0000

I think even if there’s no agreement on exactly what it is, I think we’d agree that it’s NOT just “what comes after Library 1.0″ or “the library of the future” We can argue about whether your library needs to be blogging but I think the transparency, user-centered change and connecting with users as many ways as possible [i.e. outreach online and off] are part of it. This was more a Future of Libraries conference which is fine but they used a term that already has a definition within our community of practice and that seemed weird.

As to the 96%, I wonder if it’s 96% of the people or a number of people which is 96% of our service population. I did some more digging and some libraries seem to have %110 of their people with library cards which makes very little sense unless you read it that specific way. I’ll ask about it.

By: Lindy

Lindy — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 02:54:43 +0000

Repeating Kathy: 96% of your library’s service population has library cards!!? That’s awesome!

By: Kathy Smargiassi

Kathy Smargiassi — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 21:35:59 +0000

96% of the service population have library cards?!?! Wow! I want to know what your outreach is that can get that level of acceptance

By: walt crawford

walt crawford — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 16:47:11 +0000

“Only a few of the participants seemed to know our profession’s definition of Library 2.0 ”

Well, since I’d argue strongly that there’s no agreement on what that definition is, or if there even is one, it’s hard to fault others for not knowing it.

By: Jeremy McGinniss

Jeremy McGinniss — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 22:35:14 +0000

Thanks for mentioning the “sort of network effect that is necessary for 2.0 sorts of things still eludes us.” This is something that my institution is currently wrestling with. Also, I think the other side to the network effect is the demographic of the people who are using it. I work for a small academic library in upstate NY (Binghamton) where we have most of the network problem solved but not necessarily the acceptance of the users. That is the users are not comfortable using 2.0 technology or at least deviating from the standard facebook/myspace technology.From my own brief reading it seems a lot of the writing about this is focused on the larger libraries with an assumption of a born-digital user. I think we still need to explore meeting the needs of the adopted digital user, if you will, in a smaller library setting, both academic and public. This is especially true, in my mind, in that very shady grey area of what is so confusingly termed information literacy.
This Symposium looked awesome but I found out about it too late to go; stupid. I’m glad it went well.
Peace.