Web 2.0 and the library

Web 2.0 is a new way of using available and emerging technology to connect people. It makes online interactions personal, participative and interactive. One example is this blog, and the other blogs that Yarra Plenty has, for genealogy, local history and reading. Our reading blog offers staff reviews on new books, and the genealogy and local history blogs have a wealth of information on resources in the library and activities and programs in our area.

The library is working on several projects that will be ready in the new year. One of these is our Yarrabook wiki, which will provide news and views on reading, highlight new books and enable people to add their own reviews. Another is Wikinorthia, which aims to capture the history of people, places and events in the north of Melbourne - how we live now and how we lived in the past. The third thing we are doing is setting up a Facebook account to build personal connections with people and enable them to search the catalogue straight from Facebook.

Next year we will be offering more training and classes for people who want to learn more about this new way of interacting online. We will also be holding workshops to add content to Wikinorthia so that the history of people and places is captured and available.

LibraryThing is now the second biggest library in the world! It is a library of books that people have in their own homes. It allows you to catalogue your books, share them with other people, and tag them with subjects. We have integrated LibraryThing in our catalogue, so that when you are looking at an item record you will see all the tags that people have given that book and also books like it. You can then just click on those titles or tags to navigate around the catalogue! It really is quite addictive and opens up lots of possibilities of books you might not have known about before.

If you have any ideas on how you would like to see the library using these new technologies please add your comments. We'd love to hear from you.