Interactivity is another design feature of Web 2.0. The intent is to give users a rich experience within the system, allowing them to explore on their own and providing many pathways to the end results. Users will be pleased with the experience, and that will encourage them to use it again. Libraries have been interactive ever since we opened up our stacks and allowed browsing. Our users are able to explore our resources at their own pace and in their own style. As technology changed, libraries added music listening stations, video players, and computers connected to databases and the Internet. In addition to the collections, users are able to interact directly with staff. Reference service is indeed the “Personal Relations Between Librarians and Readers” that Samuel Green discussed almost 150 years ago.1 The addition of telephone, e-mail, and virtual reference channels have extended this interaction beyond the library walls.
Social networking is touted as one of the biggest benefits of Web 2.0. Through such services as MySpace, Facebook, and Second Life, people are able to use technology to interact not just with software, but with other people. This brings me back to the experiment that begins this column. Assuming that your library is a lively place, that energy that you see around you is the library version of social networking. People come to the library for many things, but one of the most important is the ability to interact with other people. As more and more institutions in our society are being designed to minimize human contact (think automated phone systems, gas stations, and online shopping), the library’s social aspects become even more important. A few people come to us for factual information. Many more come for entertainment purposes (leisure reading, videos, audios, and computers). More and more are coming because the library is a social center, with programs, materials, and staff that enhance human contact.
Web 2.0 is good not because it makes the library more like the Web, but because it is making the Web more like the library. By my calculation, we are on Library 4.0 (see sidebar on this page), so the Web has a way to go to equal the services of the library. However, libraries have been around for millennia, and the Web for fifteen years, so it will catch up quickly.
This brings us back to the function of the reference librarian (this is a reference journal, after all). For almost 150 years, we reference librarians have served to enhance the interactive nature of the library. We answer questions, suggest reading materials, advise on research strategy, teach about our resources, schedule programs and events, help with equipment, direct people to the bathrooms, and interact in hundreds of other ways with the people who form our community. The reference librarian is the library’s human face and a gateway to an entire social network of library users. Our functions and tools have continued to evolve as our community needs have changed. Amid all the hype and the changes, the important factor to remember is that we serve our community’s needs. Helping and guiding and interacting with users–that thing that we do–will do as much to keep the library relevant and vital as any new technology or program.
Reference
- Samuel Swett Green, “Personal Relations between Librarians and Readers,” Library Journal 1 (Oct. 1876): 74-81.