Thing #15

Library 2.0 -- the emphasis being on encouraging feedback from and participation by the library's users. I would add, we should be going out and trying to find the folks who are NOT currently using the library, to see what we can do to make the library useful to them.

I have used del.icio.us to tag the webpage from Jessamyn West entitled "What We Want: An OPAC Manifesto" for reading later...

There was also a link from her website to a new "Social OPAC" which I want to explore further.

As a cataloger, I want to make the interface work for the user, but I also want to protect the integrity of the data created by professional cataloging work. Over the years a lot of careful thinking has gone into the rules of cataloging and the controlled vocabulary that is used for efficient retrieval. I'm not sure we would be happy with chucking the data in a traditional catalog, to be replaced by user-generated tags. Adding user-generated tags would be fine. Finding new ways to manipulate and deliver the data would be terrific. Let's just make sure we have reliable data to work with.