I am going to look at a few of the links suggested and post comments as I go.
Web 2.0: Where will the next generation Web take libraries?
The line in this article "You and your mobile and nonmobile devices—...—are always online, connected to one another and to the Web" reminded me of the chilling book Feed by M.T. Anderson, a science fiction novel in which people have feeds wired into their brains permanently, feeding them information and commercials. The idea is that this makes people always connected, but in reality it causes people to live inside their heads and not connect as human beings.
That scary thought aside, I am excited that I am familiar with and have used all the examples that the author brings up - Flickr, MySpace, FaceBook, del.icio.us, YouTube, LibraryThing - mostly because of Learning 2.0.
Away from the icebergs
a. "Just-in-case collection" - this has been a stumbling block that QL is conquering with the radical weeding necessary for RFID. I love to weed and love that QL has embraced it so strongly. I truly believe that less is more.
I wish I could practice this philosophy in my home life - my apartment is a haven of clutter. I have boxes that I brought from Canada full of "junk" that I feel that I need.
For me, I like work to be clean and sparse because my personal life is full of clutter. I wonder if those who hate to weed their library collections have tidy houses with lots of clear surfaces. :-)
b. "Reliance on user education" - I'm going guess that our patron-to-librarian ratio at QL is about 2,000,000 to 500, or 4,000 to 1. I welcome any comments if this is incorrect. One way that I try to help is by walking a patron over to the public catalog when they ask for a book or movie, looking it up there in front of them while I explain everything I'm doing, and staying with them so they can look up the next book themselves. As to be expected, kids pick up using the catalog the fastest. I wish there was a catalog computer in the J room.
Into a new world of librarianship
The concept of technolust, or buying technology simply because it exists, seems to be gripping our country. Some have said that our abundance of databases is an example of this.
Rather than filling a need, technology sometimes creates a need. For example, many people rushed out to get their iPhones and PlayStation 3s as soon as these products came out because they "needed" these products that have never existed before.
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