Thing 2

It's taken more time than I'd like to read through Thing 2 and come up with what I hope will be a decent post...
I am going to paste some stuff that I liked from the article "The ongoing Web revolution.(Chapter 1)." and make a few comments...

Communicate the mission, vision, and purpose of the library's social participation and then trust the staff to go forth and blog, build wikis, or interact with library users in other ways via other tools.
My comment: some staff will have more to say than others and that's ok. I think that children's librarians or teen librarians can make excellent use of blogs and wikis that will be for the common good. (we actually already do this but maybe not to it's potential yet)
Participation is the element that "scales up" Library 2.0 in Fichter's definition. It has three important aspects:
* Participation by library staff-We need to understand the tools, use them, and recognize their significance to library services. A well-trained staff is the key to utilizing social technologies.
My comment: My spirit is willing...trying to find the time is another thing...this is very time-consuming. But I'm getting there.
* Participation by library users--We need to offer online spaces for our users to do what they have come to expect on the World Wide Web--participate, create, play--and give them reasons to do 50.
My comment: a place for favorite reads? a place for students to collaborate on projects?
* Participation within our systems--We need to create systems and spaces for library users and library staff to interact. Content might be created here. Connections will be made. Stories will be told and kept. We also need to explore systems already in place where the library might have presence.
My comments: requests or comments on children's books or storytime themes or special programs for children? I'd be interested in stuff like that. And I'd be ok with parents sharing stories but kids & teens may not always use the best judgement when posting comments...remember Art Linkletter's show Kids Say the Darndest Things?!! And look at the stuff that gets in the news about My Space or places like that...that worries me. Who would be responsible for monitoring the site and removing 'offensive' material? and who would say what is offensive? yikes...the more I think about this one the more nervous it makes me.

I may come back and post more but out of time for now!