Basic Concept 1: Web 2.0

I have heard quite a lot a bout Web 2.0. To be honest, I was very fuzzy about its basic concept until recently. To go down to the basics, I went to Tim O'Reilly's site and obtained a list of side-by-side comparisons between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. As it was published on 9/30/2005, some products and services might be long gone, or augmented or even replaced by newer crops.

Web 2.0 found itself popular overnight following the first O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004. According to Tim O'Reilly, "Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform." Wikipedia puts it more simply, "Web 2.0 refers to a perceived second generation of web-based communities, and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies — which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users."

In my humble opinion, Web 1.0 opened up to the whole world the potentials of Internet, whereas Web 2.0 spread the democracy of Internet to the four corners of the world. Everyone can not only observe, but more importantly s/he can all play, write, create and share/publish in their own loosely- or closely-knit communities in the form of blogs, myspace and facebook. So the revolution is not limited to business, but to all walks of life, as long as one is willing to plunge in.

So what kind of impact does Web 2.0 exert on libraries and library collections? Rick Anderson has summerized most eloquently, we need to prepare 1) the 'just in case; collection, for our patrons will expect access to everything, print, nonprint and digital; 2) Reliance on user education, so our patrons can spend less frustrating time on learning new technological gadgets, but more on actual reading and learning. Such one-button command as 'Blog this' seems to be a promising model; and 3) transforming the 'come to us' model of library service into a new model placing library service and content in our patrons' preferred environment Web, or into their patterns of work, study and play. How much have we done?