If you prick us, do we not bleed?*

This blog article reviews Paul Anderson's editorial titled ''All That Glisters Is Not Gold' Web 2.0 and the Librarian' (Anderson, 2007), from the Journal of Librarianship and Information Science.

In this editorial, the author tries to present a framework for understanding the role of libraries in the context of the changing Web, specifically what he refers to as Web 2.0. While his technical expertise is admirable, his background in computer science does not place him in a good position to be assessing the role and needs of libraries and their relationship with Web 2.0, and this comes through in his writing.

He ably discusses the various types of uses recently arisen on the web, but does not manage to give any concrete examples of how these advances are relevant to libraries themselves, or even whether libraries should be changing with the web. Perhaps his mention of libraries in the introduction is purely to imply relevance to the readers of the particular journal for which he is writing.

Anderson identifies the following three main issues:
1) The web is changing (these changes are termed 'Web 2.0')
2) Libraries need to adapt to these changes
3) We need a framework to understand how

'Web 2.0' is a term coined in 2004 by Dale Doherty, a director of O'Reilly Media, during a conference about the future of the web. It was intended to convey a sense of optimism; that despite the 'dot-com bust', the web is now more important than ever, and rapidly changing so as to be both vastly different from even a decade earlier, and also far more important to users in their everyday lives. The big difference is that the web is now interactive, with large proportions of its content able to be changed and updated by the users, in formats such as wikis, blogs, and social networking sites. Anderson states that the long answer to 'what is Web 2.0?' is “rather more complicated and pulls in economics, technology and new ideas about the connected society”, but then completely fails to mention what any of those factors may be.

Having given an overview of 'Web 2.0', Anderson then presents his framework for discussion of Web 2.0, which reads rather more like a framework for understanding the web itself on three different levels (the visible, 'six big ideas', and web technologies and standards), rather than being a structure promoting discussion of the role of libraries in the changing world of information technology. He fails to relate his discussion of the web to the survival of libraries at all, and infers that the reader will see the relationship between the two, which might be taking our powers of imagination for granted. He does not at any stage look at whether Web 2.0 is relevant to libraries, and whether they need to adapt and change to meet changing demands, or whether library users are perhaps a completely different subset of society from those engaging in the interactive web space. There are no examples given for how libraries might think about adopting some of these technologies, with the exception of mention of one experiment in asking a youth reading group to design a MySpace group for the library to facilitate easier sharing of reading lists. (This assumes that young people are not using libraries, however Australian library user demographics (see Culture and Leisure) demonstrate that library use is in fact highest among the youngest age group, and gradually decreases with age (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2007).) Overall the lack of concrete examples was tedious, and what few examples there were were often irrelevant and vague.

One valid point made however, was that librarians' experience with open source information puts them in a good position to be able to discuss the ethics of Web 2.0, particularly with regards to privacy and copyright.

In conclusion, if there is to be discussion on the relevance of libraries in the 21st Century, we will need a better way of looking at the questions than Anderson's framework.

* Quote from 'The Merchant of Venice' (Shakespeare, 1600, Act 3, Scene 1.)

References
Anderson, P. (2007). 'All That Glisters is Not Gold' Web 2.0 and the
          Librarian. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science,
          39(4), 195-198. doi:10.1177/0961000607083210

Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2007). Culture and Leisure. In
          4159.0 - General Social Survey: Summary Results, Australia,
          2006. Retrieved from http://www.abs.gov.au/Ausstats
          /abs@.nsf/Lookup/C6BF68E57D3A308CCA256E21007686F8

Shakespeare, W. (1600). The Merchant of Venice. London: Thomas
          Heyes.

O'Reilly, T. (2005). What is Web 2.0 Design Patterns and Software
          for the Next Generation of Software. In O'Reilly. Retrieved
          from http://oreilly.com/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html