'All that Glisters is not gold- Web 2.0 and the librarian' (Paul Anderson, 2007)

The article 'All that glisters is not gold- Web 2.0 and the Librarian' discusses the librarianship profession and what works (Anderson, 2007, p. 195). It discusses Web 2.0 and the implications and uses it has for the librarianship profession. It briefly explains the history of Web 2.0. The term Web 2.0 was officially coined in 2004 by Dale Dougherty, a vice-president of O'Reilly Media Inc. during a discussion about the future of the Web (Anderson, 2007, p. 196).

In Paul Anderson's article 'What is Web 2.0? Ideas, technologies and implications for education' he discusses whether the Web is a publishing revolution or a social revolution. Some say it could be both. With the rise of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter or blogging we can see that the Web is an extremely popular form of communication. The Web is socially connected where everyone is able to add to and edit the information space (Anderson, 2007, p. 195). As the Internet has become such a huge part of western culture, professional groups, including librarians' need to attempt to make sense of these changes and engage with the issues and challenges raised (Anderson, 2007, p. 195).

Paul Anderson is correct in saying that the Web could be a social revolution. You only have to read a blog or connect to Facebook to know various aspects of people's lives, what they are doing each day and when. Web 2.0 has taken off in western culture and libraries now have to keep up with the rapidly changing technologies of Web 2.0. In the library industry web tools are a very important part of daily work. In public libraries for example there are many people who use the computer resources for research and even social networking. As ideas, technologies and services associated with Web 2.0 have swept through the internet there has been considerable interest in their potential impact from within the library community.

'Library 2.0' is a term believed to have been first coined by Michael Casey (Anderson, 2007, p. 196 as cited by Miller, 2006b). With Library 2.0 there is a large focus on reaching out from the physical constraints of a library to offer new and more dynamic ways of piecing together data held in individual libraries in order to re-imagine data as content through the power of Web-based services (Anderson, 2007, p. 196). For example, an experiment in the East of England plans to get teenagers from library reading groups to design a MySpace home for the library. The hope is that this will provide a 'new front door to the library' for a younger audience and will help build the reading group through virtual networking and shared reading lists (Anderson, 2007, p. 196 as cited by Baker, 2007). By mentioning this in the article Anderson has made an excellent point by suggesting that if libraries begin or even continue to reach out to the younger generation through forms of social networking such as MySpace, libraries will be seen as an interesting place to visit and teenagers will want to go to a library as a way of socialising.

'Web 2.0' will have a substantial impact on the library profession, and I believe that libraries will need to keep up with the rapidly changing technology in order to stay relevant. The article does not really discuss the range of services that can be delivered through Web 2.0, for example, receiving a university degree. It does not discuss the fact that the delivery of services on 'Web 2.0' will have both positive and negative consequences - that is, greater levels of interaction in the virtual world is not always ideal.

In relation to the Library profession Web 2.0 is an important part of the future and this article suggests that the web has come a long way from when the term 'Web 2.0' was officially coined in 2004 (Anderson, 2007, p. 195). Although that is only really a few years ago technology changes so rapidly and the library industry must be able to keep up with these changes.