Implement Library 2.0 in your library today...

Implementation of Library 2.0 in your library using Web 2.0 is as easy as 1 2 3...

Yes!! Coz Free and Open Source Softwares are with you to implement it... Lets see how?

Library 2.0 is all about the participation of your users / patrons / customers in knowledge creating and knowledge management process. This can be achieved by following Web 2.0 services:

• Blogs
  
• RSS
  
• Bulletin Boards
  
• Social Networking
  
• Tagging / Bookmarking
  
• Twitter
  

BLOGS

BLOGS (Abb of Web Logs) are the ideas or short stories which you may want to share your users and may get there point of view in the form of contents. Start blogging in your library by creating your account at WordPress. It will not take more than 5 minutes. You can signup at http://en.wordpress.com/signup/

Another free Blogging service is Blogger, If you are Google lover then I would suggest to use Blogger at https://www.blogger.com/start (First you have to create a Gmail account, is it?)

RSS

RSS or Really Simple Syndication is Web 2.0 technology used to fetch the useful information from so many websites without opening them. This information directly comes in your client (I use Microsoft Outlook as RSS client).

Many newsgroups like BBC, CNN, Jang, Dawn, etc offer RSS on their websites. Just visit their home page and locate this yellow color icon (I think color is not important) and copy the location of link into your RSS client.

Bulletin Boards / Forums

Forum is an other example of sharing information or knowledge with others. It is a little bit different from BLOG in nature. In BLOGS, you create or initiate a discussion but in forums, any registered user/member can start any topic and others can reply or post comments. There are many free forums softwares like phpbb, Simple Machines Forum (I personally recommend phpbb). Both are free and open-source.

To start a Bulletin Board Free visit http://www.getforum.org/

Social Networking

I believe most of us know it very well. Facebook, MySpace, Tagged, etc are the examples of Social Networking websites. Just join one of them (I recommend Facebook). Add your users in your friend list and create the page of your library for interaction with your friends / users. There are so many libraries on Facebook like:

Charleston County Public Library
National Centre for Physics, Library
Waterville Public-Library, NY

Many libraries are using MySpace like:

Waterville Public Library
Denver Public Library Teens

Tagging / Bookmarking

We all know how to save a bookmark in Internet Explorer. But saving a bookmark online with tags/subjects is really a fun. What happens when you save bookmarks on your computer? The number of bookmarks increases day by day and after a few days you are not able to find the required bookmark when you need it. Similarly if you have saved your bookmarks in Internet Explorer / FireFox, these are saved in your local hard drive and you can not access them on other computers. You can not share them with your users/patrons.

The solutions is... Online Bookmarking and Tagging. You save your bookmarks on any online server and add some tags/subjects according to those bookmarks which can easily be found when you need them.

Now a days different links / Websites are being tagged by million/billion users, so you can find your required link easily.
Remember Library 2.0 core concept is by involving your users in knowledge management. So ask your users to put tags for you. Traditional Subject Heading Lists are not as effective as tags because according to "Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources, OCLC, 2005", 84% typical topic search starts by a search engine with keyword/tag which is not associated to any Standard Subject Heading List

Even Librarians 2.0 are involving their users in cataloging and indexing process
I would suggest http://delicious.com for online bookmarking and tagging. Some public listings of these bookmarks and tags are as under:

Nicole Engard's Bookmarks

NCP Library's Bookmarks

Create your account at DELICIOUS and start Bookmarking and Tagging.

Note: Do not forget to make your bookmarks public for sharing with users

Twitter

According to Wikipedia, "Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read each others' updates, known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters, displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to other users - known as followers - who have subscribed to them."

As mentioned above, twitter is a very fast and effective way to share information/updates to your followers (Library Users). It can be used to push the updates in Current Awareness Service of your Library. Just create an account at twitter and start twittering.

Twitter is really a fun when used with your cell phone. Unfortunately this service (Cell phone connectivity) is not available in Pakistan right now. But you can use it by using third party service at isms.pk

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Ata ur Rehman
ata.rehman@gmail.com