I first heard the term “Library 2.0” or L2 as it is referred to my many, sometime during my second full-time semester of library school; which was less than a year ago. Not really understanding the concept I took a very traditional library approach and attempted to look the term up in my brand new and newly released 2006 edition of the Whole Library Handbook 4.  

Published by the ALA, the book is a self-described “one-volume encyclopedia of library history, demographics, folklore, humor, current events, and popular wisdom”. If you have not heard about the book it really is a wonderful resource that is full of interesting library facts and history.   

Intrigued by the L2 concept I first consulted the book’s table of contents, expecting to find a chapter or two on the subject and found nothing. I next checked the index and was still unable to find any reference to the concept. I knew that the L2 concept somehow involved the use of technologies in the library I checked the book again looking for related terms such as wikis, instant messaging, virtual reference, social software, groupware, discussion boards, podcasts, and RSS feeds. In the entire 585 page book the only related terms I found were the terms internet and blog. After spending several minutes pouring thorough the book with little success I abandoned by traditional approach for a more modern tactic; Google. 

A split second search on the term “library 2.0” returned over 121,000,000 results. In less time that I took me to put down my print volume I was fully presented with a vast array of rich resources where I could learn about L2 by reading and listening to podcasts, contribute my thoughts by postings on other people’s blogs and collaborate with others using wikis.  

After spending sometime exploring my search results and reading various blogs I was reminded of the fact that all of these programs and the technologies that support them are all merely tools that facilitate communication, learning and collaboration.  

The emergence of technology has had a tremendous impact on the information seeking behaviors of individuals. As the infosphere continues to expand so do the number of choices available for information consumers to find the information they are looking for. To maintain their relevance and creditable as a reliable information source librarians need to find new and innovative ways to continue to demonstrate their value to their users.  The philosophies espoused by the library 2.0 concept provide librarians with a variety of innovative and relatively inexpensive ways for libraries to re-connect with their users. 

As Michael Casey points out in his blog, http://www.librarycrunch.com/2006/01/post_1.html “Library 2.0 is a service philosophy – a theory, if you will – that attempts to guide libraries in their effort to win new users while, at the same time, acknowledging that our current service offerings are insufficient and inflexible”.  

From my explorations I now know that the L2 philosophy is a relatively new concept and that point was clearly demonstrated when I was unable to find any references to it in a 2006 ALA publication.

In their article “Born with a Chip” http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA411572.html Abram and Luther point out that average librarian is a Boomer over 50 and that there is a growing one to two generation gap between most of the profession and the growing group of primary users.  Given that gap and the newness of the L2 concept it would seem to me that the most important next steps for us as new librarians is to help education other professionals in the field about these important tools and their potentially transformative effect that they could have in their library.