End of the Road

Last summer I eagerly began working through a series of Web 2.0 tools to see what I could discover about those tools. Since those lovely days in early July, I have had an insufferable cold (late July), lost an employee to the Grim Reaper (early September), began holding major responsibilities with the Faculty Senate (the Committee on Committees and the Welfacre Committee; the last named includes automatic membership on the Benefits Committee, and THAT Committee has very serious charges to meet, including changes to the university benefits). These responsibilities have taken so much of my time (in addition to my job, which I love), that I have no time left for Web 2.0. So, someday I hope to complete the lessons; I certainly intend to keep up with these tools.

Here's my positive, professional, public comments about blogs, wikis, and so forth:

What great tools for libraries. Photos of your library on Flickr. Wikis for librarians. Blogs for librarians. LibraryThing as a potential tool for collection development. RSS feeds for information about the profession. Podcasts for teaching. There's a wealth of tools to use, and libraries and librarians would be foolish indeed not to take advantage of these resources for however long they exist -- for they could easily morph into something else within a few years.

Here's my other take on Web 2.0 tools:

I feel overwhelmed by the number of accounts I now have, and by the amount of information at my fingertips. Maybe I don't want all this information. Maybe I want to curl up on the sofa with a cat and cup of tea and read Dickens instead of going through all these accounts and gathering all this information that may or may not be of value to me. Do I want to spend my time doing this? That's my first point -- I feel like this is just too much information. And I am excluding my listservs on libraries and personal email and the listserv about birds. (And I tried a listserv on banjos once -- don't do it!!!! Practice instead!) So there's those resources. And then, gee, there's snail mail. Mostly junk, but still I have to sort through that too. (And magazines and professinal journals -- gosh, I wish C&RL News would go online. But I digress.)

My other point and this is the final one and the most important one is simply that I'm a private person, and I don't really want to put out that much information on the web where it can be read and seen. This is just me, and it doesn't matter if I'm 31 or 41 or 51 or 61 -- it's just me at this juncture in my life. I have discovered that I do like to post photos on Flickr (ok, there's just a few, but I want to put up more) and I like Library Thing, and opened an account for that a year ago. I remain ambivalant about FaceBook -- not sure I want to be there, but like being there. Otherwise, I really don't care much for sharing my life online. (If I were 21, I would sing a different song, but I'm not.) My final concern is that Web 2.0 takes a lot of my time, and when I do have time, I really prefer to -- well, not read Dickens, but play the piano. I bought a baby grand over a year ago, and I like to commune with it daily if possible. So I can spend my time with Beethoven and Schumann and Chopin or I can blog. (Yes, I could blog about those dead guys, and about when I get into my Duke Ellington mood, but then I wouldn't be PLAYING the Duke or anyone else, would I? I'd be busy blogging.)

For anyone reading through this, remember there's a line drawn here: what I think about Web 2.0 as a set of tools for libraries (more cool ways to serve our users!) and what I think about Web 2.0 personally -- it's just not quite for me. At least not yet. There may come a day when I'll make a podcast of a Beethoven sonata or put up a video on YouTube of my "great" rendition of "Satin Doll." Maybe.

So, auf wiedersehen for now. But for those of you in the library -- use these tools. We're here to help our users, and Web 2.0 is one of the most exciting ways to help users these days! Bravo, Web 2.0!