Walt Crawford: Library 2.0 Five Years Later

In the most recent issue of his Cites & Insights, Walt Crawford tracks the evolution of discussions over the concept of Library 2.0 in the last five years:

"One truly beneficial result of the whole 'Library 2.0' phenomenon is that some (by no means all) library groups and libraries recognize the virtue of small, rapidly-deployed, 'failable' projects: ones done without a lot of planning and deployment, ones that can grow if they succeed, die if they fail and in many cases serve as learning experiences."

"Not that such small projects are new to Library 2.0, but I believe the rhetoric and experiences of Library 2.0 made the virtues of small projects more evident to some library folk who had forgotten them."

"It’s also certainly the case that, used thoughtfully, the tools and techniques of the web and the internet expand the universe of feasible small projects. A library can start a blog or a Facebook group a lot more easily and affordably than it can start a mailed newsletter—and, done right, the blog or group may be recognizable as a failable experiment: one that might reasonably disappear after a few months (...) "

"I’d love to do an overview that summarizes the Library 2.0 story since that first essay appeared, but I can’t imagine attempting something that ambitious. I don’t have ready access to most of the articles that have appeared on the topic; I haven’t read most of the books; I certainly don’t have the patience to go through all the posts related to Library 2.0. Nor, for that matter, am I naïve enough to believe an overview from Walt Crawford would be accepted as objective or balanced—or even to make such a claim. "

"What this is, is another set of recent notes (...), commingling items that are related to the term 'Library 2.0' or the set of tools and perspectives or that I found fit within that framework. That discussion slops over into issues about balance in libraries and for librarians, some of which aren’t clearly Library 2.0-related. Finally, we’ll look briefly at a new term and quasi-movement that may exhibit some of Library 2.0’s characteristics—or may not."

Cites & Insights is described as "a journal of libraries, policy, technology and media" published monthly since 2001.