Federal Library Community Forms Web 2.0 Interest Group

Interested federal government librarians in Canada are looking into the creation of a Web 2.0 Interest Group to explore ways of incorporating wikis, RSS, collaborative technologies, open source, etc. into their work.

An invitation to join was sent out this week by one of the manager's of the Industry Canada Library and Knowledge Centre.

The invitation reads in part:

"What we need to do as a federal library community is to draw together this shared interest in Web 2.0. This will enable us to hear about common areas of interest and then discuss issues and challenges presented and the lessons learned."

"So, what is Web 2.0? Tapscott and Andrews in their influential work Wikinomics distinguish Web 2.0 from what they call the old Web. 'While the old Web was about Web sites, clicks and eyeballs, the new Web is about communities, participation and peering.' Openness, peering and sharing are the action words of a new generation of knowledge workers. The key is audience engagement. As librarians, we would like more of that in our libraries. The promise for libraries is that our audiences that are now going to Amazon, Google and YouTube also come to the Library."

"So, this is an invitation to you to get involved. We are proposing:

• to form an interest group next month
• to identify & publish a list of key resources on Web 2.0 specifically for federal libraries
• to identify topics of interest in Web2.0 for discussion, for example, wikis, RSS, collaborative technologies, open source, etc.
• to identify departments engaged in Web 2.0 projects and
• to show the results to the community this fall."
  

Federal government librarians should contact Industry Canada's Oryst Iwanycky [iwanycky DOT oryst AT ic.gc.ca].