by What an amazing panel of experts! Michael Stephens, Amanda Etches-Johnson, and John Blyberg (all bloggers I regularly read). Amanda Etches-Johnson brought up three trends to watch – RSS, websites, and meaningful online outreach. I think she was right on the money when she mentioned that our websites are in dire need of help. This is where many of our patrons start – they are virtual library branches – and more thought and time needs to be put into them. We need to stop organizing them in ways that our meaningful to us and start thinking about how our patrons use our sites.
John Blyberg was also amazing. I had also gone to hear about the great work he has done on his library’s OPAC, or should I say SOPAC (Social OPAC). He has integrated social software into their OPAC successfully – a great model for other OPACs to strive for. He spoke of the importance of open source.
This was the first session that I got to hear Michael Stephens speak. He had been at my library early that week (while I was conferencing) to launch our library’s Learning Library 2.0 session (which is going to be great! More on that later I hope). Michael rose a number of points for us to consider when thinking of library 2.0:
- conversations
- convergence
- content
- redefining LIS job descriptions
- citizen journalism
- openness and sharing
- participation
- experience and play
