Virtual Identity Dialogue

My wife just got back from attending the Texas Library Association conference in San Antonio. Actually I tagged along because San Antonio is one of my favorite cities, it allowed for my annual trip to the Alamo (The Biography of Davy Crockett was the first non-picture book I ever read and I've been attached to that place ever since) and I got to add another Marriott to my next mythical book "How to effectively work from Marriott Hotels".

Also I have my masters in library and information sciences as well though I have never worked in a library (though that is more by accident than design). I am the official example of what you can do with a MS-LIS from my alma-mater besides being a librarian.

The biggest surprise for me at this conference was a lunch discussion we had around Web 2.0 and "Library 2.0" and whether I thought it could be helpful. This was interesting because while my wife is comfortable around technology - she is much more mainstream than I. Thus if she is tossing around terms like RSS and Web 2.0 it means it has reached a level of acceptance that is outside the techno-class.

The core benefits I told her I saw from "Web 2.0" was that it opened up possibilities to make it easier to have more personal relationships with the public as well as making it easier to keep people informed of upcoming events (using something simple like an RSS feed on the library page).

The "more personal" part could be as simple as a blog by a set of the librarians that listed the books they are reading and their reviews. With potentially using something like comments or trackbacks to allow the public to share their feedback as well.

As I told her (and she agreed) - this was basically something they already did - in person. People love to ask librarians what they are reading and library staff already keep list of their recommended books. Additionally librarians spend time preparing "book talks" which are effectively personal reviews of books that they can share with the public.

To me this seems more inline with what Web 2.0 really means - using technology to help enhance capabilities we do in person to help reach a broader audience. And identity will play a role in this in-so-far that identity is required to help facilitate these types of conversations.