May 15, 2006

Jeff Trzeciak's Podcast - My Comments

One of the assignments for Week 2 of ALA Library 2.0 was a podcast of Jeff Trzeciak speaking on the training and roles of "librarian 2.0".

Trzeciak was one of the people responsible for the Next Generation Librarian job posting. What I find unique about such a job posting was not the responsibilities listed, but that a single position was developed to incorporate everything. I have seen people that have SOME of the listed tasks as electronic resource librarians, IT staff, instruction librarians, etc. Wayne State is looking for a single person to provide the innovation to use Web 2.0 technologies to develop Library 2.0 for its patrons.

He described the Web 2.0 technologies as "live and organic". He highlighted how these concepts may be in direct disagreement with librarianship in general, where we have total control (subject categories, keywords, etc.). He also looked at how today's generations desire "what they want when they want it".

Trzeciak says Librarian 2.0 needs to:

But are these just the traits needed by any organization or business to continue to succeed and improve? I expect many librarians or other professionals were "2.0" a long time ago, but now the technology has finally caught up.

Important traits of a "Library 2.0":
Again, I hope some libraries were already set-up like this. If not, the new technologies and user needs give them chance to reconstruct themselves. We can no longer assume libraries will always exist, if we do not change. The value of libraries is not as obvious in today's economy, culture, politics, and user's everyday lives.

As a side note, I have really been starting to use podcasts more often to increase my chance to absorb information. This specific podcast did have some audio problems, but if you a new consumer of podcasts, do not let it scare you away. Podcasts allow for some great benefits such as multitasking and portability.

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