I read a few of the perspectives from the eOCLC Next Space newsletter. At the moment I don't feel as if I have a unified sort of vision of how public libraries can embrace Library 2.0 and Web 2.0 but the articles did give me some idea of the wide ranging possibilities.
Michael Stephens' "Into a new world of librarianship" gave me some ideas about the kind of web 2.0 tools that we could be relevant and useful for our library users. Perhaps we could use instant messaging for information requests. At the moment we have a form on our website that customers can submit if they want to request information/reference help but instant messaging would allow more of a dialogue between the information requester and the librarian, which has potential benefits for both. However, I'm not sure if the use of 'instant messaging' may create unrealistic expectations of the kind of time frame within which we would be able to deliver the information. I think that blogs are definitely another tool we could use. We have an events calendar on our website but I think that an events blog might be more effective. People could subscribe to the blog to receive notification about upcoming events. They could also contribute comments about the events.
I think that Michael Stephens' point that "Librarian 2.0 makes good, yet fast decisions" is crucial. I'm amazed by how quickly things are changing in the technological sphere. If we don't speed up our responses to these changes by the time we implement new technologies our customers may have moved on to newer things.
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