Web 2.0 and the Library 2.0 in Your Future

Stephen Abram, VP of Innovation at SirsiDynix and blogger at Stephen's Lighthouse, was our keynote speaker. Don't miss the chance to hear him--and he speaks so much that it's hard to imagine not getting the chance. He makes an audience laugh out loud, he uses great visuals, and he makes you feel good about being a librarian. Pretty much exactly what a conference planning committee wants in a keynote speaker.

Here are some quotes I liked:

• This is the best time to be in libraries.


• The library unfetters infomration because it has library staff and librarians.


• The book is not at risk. It does not need our protection.

This is one of his slides:

What do libraries do best?

• we create an experience


• we improve the quality of the question


• we support community and learning

He mentioned librarian / staff recommendations. That's not normally the kind of thing that academic librarians do, since we don't do reader's advisory. But I could see it working if the format was fun enough. Content for a podcast perhaps? Have library staff share some resource they find particularly useful.

He mentioned an idea of letting patrons record a book review of a book they've just returned for Library Radio, the library's podcast. Abram was pretty sure that kids would do that, I wonder if college students would.

Some sites to check out when I get back:

• Hennepin County's My Space page--it has a search box to the catalog (SirsiDynix, heh) that can be copied on to a patron's My Space page--so they can search in their own space


• Eastern University has a website that looks like Second Life


• Speaking of Second Life, the SL library has hundreds of thousands of patrons. Wonder if any Wash U students are in SL? If they are, how can I tell them about the library?


• blinkxTV, has content within five minutes of being on TV


• Rollyo. I've looked at this before but I wonder if it would be possible to build special search engines for students doing particular types of research.

Labels: conferences

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