During the last years of the 20th century the WorldWide Web moved from being a one-way,
authority-based environment to a more collaborative and participatory platform. Something like the first release of a software package, version 1.0, and the new, improved version, 2.0.
Things like user-provided content (think Flickr) and collaboration (think Wikipedia) began to be the norm. Web users now frequently contribute to web content (read any reviews on Amazon lately?), and the technology of website design has grown to incorporate user-focused changes in more and more pages.
Image shared from http://www.personalizemedia.com/index.php/2006/08/27/virtual-worlds-web-30-and-portable-profiles/
Growing out of that shift in the WWW and its technology has come a view of library services which focuses on user (or potential user) needs and wants. Granted, part of the impetus for change has been the growing competition with Internet search engines and their often unverified results that has slowly eroded the dependence on the local library as a source for the public's information needs.
Inevitably the print document, the very backbone of libraries, is being impacted by those very same technological changes. I'd like to be reading Friedman's The world is flat on a Kindle but there is still that cost issue.
Many folks knowledgeable about libraries and information trends in this increasingly wired environment believe that libraries --and librarians-- must change with the culture (update to a newer version, if you will) to remain relevant.
In coming posts I'll share specifics and examples of these trends. And I'll consider how these trends and innovations can and do impact the academic library and its place in the Information Age.
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