My Thoughts from the OCLC Next Space Newsletter "Web 2.0: Where will the next generation of the web it take libraries?"
Laptops, digital cameras and I pods for checkout? I love the new web 2.0 concepts for the future of our libraries. I am library technician for a School Library that has wi-fi but no laptops! The IT department is not at all open to allowing My Space or any social networking. They block Flickr, which could be used so creatively in education. .Even though our teachers would love to have You Tube for educational purposes, our IT department is so concerned about safety that they block it. Students are not even allowed to check email! I am just grateful that they don’t block blogs and Wikipedia! The collective intelligence from Wikipedia, and other wikis is also exciting for the future of research.
I want a student and teacher centered library where you can watch You Tube, post pictures on a Flickr account, create blogs and wikis, and even check your email. I would like for our students to have training on how and where to use Google verses electronic sources. I want to offer more online classes, and to try to understand all of the copyright issues that come with online classes and other web 2.0 tools. Reading the Horizon Report 2008, inspired me to encourage more creative uses of web 2.0 in education with digital videos, photo essays and blogs rather than having students writing long research papers.
I cannot relate as much to the three dimensional world of web 3.0 that Dr. Wendy Shultz describes, with “Second Life”, probably because I have not used any of those web3.0 tools, and I am still trying to understand the many facets of Web 2.0!
I enjoyed reading “To a Temporary Space in Time,” where Dr. Wendy Shultz paints a picture of a Web 4.0 library as a sanctuary, a quiet place of meditation, a luxurious experience, “away from the technohustle” with comfortable leather chairs and good light. Her description is close to the library of my dreams.
