Unit 8

Question:

Organizing books and materials used to be in the domain of professionally trained catalogers and indexers. Now, through Web 2.0 it is in the hands of everyday "folk". What are the implications of this trend for librarians? Also, for additional food for thought, go to your Delicious site and examine your list of tags. In your, opinion, are these tags more or less helpful than traditional subject headings?

Thoughts in response to Chapters in Courtney Text for this unit: 

Librarians can use trends to their advantage if they are willing to embrace technology and change. Most people have become very comfortable navigating sites for information but they lack recognition of the significant differences in authority and quality of information. If library sites are built with the user in mind; many will choose to consult your library site as opposed to simply trusting Google to find the information they seek.

Being aware of the needs of the patron as opposed to those of the librarian is crucial when designing online catalogs. Sites must be simple, organized, and fast-loading. Visitors must be able to make natural language searches where spell check will suggest alternates for their search queries and relevancy sorting will save them time. They must offer more than just a place to look for book titles. There needs to be areas such as subject or genre Blogs and places for patron book reviews to encourage communication and recommendations among users. Things like "suggest a book to a friend" email links are also valuable.  

Your library web page should effectively communicate the value of the library, its resources, and the librarians available to assist.  Adding technologies such as virtual library tours; mashups to allow one to find your location on a map; and podcasts of booktalks, storytelling, and instruction in how to use resources, will help to increase traffic to your site because people will find visiting your library site a place worthy of their time and they will be drawn into exploring all the library has to offer.

Once upon a time, no one knew what was happening at the Library unless they were a frequent visitor and happened to walk by the right display or pick up a brochure at the check out desk.  We now live in an exciting time where librarians have the opportunity to entice patrons to come for programs, and keep them abreast of the latest offering through the information they find at the click of a button; yet it is up to us, to make the 2.0 visit inviting and engaging.

I think that tags as those used on the Delicious site are more helpful than traditional subject headings because they allow one to choose a tag meaningful to their purpose and to choose multiple tags. For example, if you are searching for resources for a particular project or research paper, you can use a traditional subject heading and also something unique to that purpose. That way it is easy to focus on just the materials you need at the moment but also use them for other things in the future.  As a future librarian I appreciate this because I will be able to tag sites for particular classes or units in a simplified way for teachers and students to find with ease. I personally have so many teacher websites saved in my "Favorites" at the moment, I can't find anything...I can't wait to have a little time to start putting these into my Delicious account so that I will be able to share these sites with teachers in the future with quickness and ease!