#15 On Library 2.0 & Web 2.0 ...

I would like to comment on the following excerpt from "Away from the Icebergs:"

"We need to focus our efforts not on teaching research skills but on eliminating the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need, so they can spend as little time as possible wrestling with lousy search interfaces and as much time as possible actually reading and learning. Obviously, we’ll help and educate patrons when we can, and when they want us to, and the more we can integrate our services with local curricula, the better. But if our services can’t be used without training, then it’s the services that need to be fixed—not our patrons. One-button commands, such as Flickr’s “Blog This,” and easy-to-use programs like Google Page Creator, offer promising models for this kind of user-centric service."

A lot of this commentary seems more relevant to an academic library, but I think the concept of eliminating barriers to certain resources is important in the public library environment as well....perhaps, even, more important. It is an iceberg we must avoid hitting as well. Public library patrons may not have to regularly conduct research. When you don't do something often, it is difficult to keep up with the current trends and techniques, so it is even more important to make things like databases more accessible and easier for them to use.

A public library patron who hasn't had a lot of higher education--in contrast to the majority of college students--may not even know that databases and other such resources exist. The issue moves beyond that of making these resources easy to use without training or that of struggling with lousy search interfaces to that of making them easy to recognize (making their existence easily acknowledgeable or increasing knowledge that the search interface is even there, whether it is lousy or not), to understand, AND to use. In a sense, several steps in the current research chain need to be eliminated or combined. We have a lot of extra things to consider. Plus, it is not just students we have to worry about, but every patron. Everyone should have equal knowledge of and access to these resources...if they want it.

In the public library, as in the academic one, research would no longer be something one had to be "skilled" with/at/in/on if we removed some of the barriers to it. At the least, it would not require as complicated a set of skills if all of the above issues were addressed or it would make use of skills patrons already have.

I'm not trying to eliminate the librarian, though it might seem like it. Advanced research, would still require skills, acquired through specialized training. Plus, library and information professionals' understanding of people and their searching habits would be a vital resource for information on how to intuit the best way to make services easier to use and the best way to adapt services to users instead of users to services.