Saturday, October 13, 2007
White Paper or White Wash
After meandering through some of the posts it would seem that so far everyone is in agreement that Chad and Miller are all mouth and trousers! Lets face it, Do libraries matter? The rise of library 2.0 is nothing more than a sales pitch. Well I supposed they have to make living somehow, but they should have pitched their virtual library idea at disney world. Their constant referrals to Amazon and Google as the ideal to which libraries should aspire was irratating at best. Although the content is interesting, it is highly biased. After dissecting this paper, it would seem that neither Chad nor Miller truly grasp the fundamental principles of the library. Yes, there is certainly a need for libraries to find, and keep, a place in the virtual realm and the challenges in doing so will be tremendous. Perhaps by presenting the possibilities of library 2.0, therein lay the true value, if any, of this paper. It certainly has no intrinsic value for information professionals, apart from something to argue about around the water cooler.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I wish I'd found your blog a long time ago too! That being said, I'm amazed at how many of our classmates think just like us! Chad & Miller seem to be taking a beating from everyone, and, most interestingly, for many of the same reasons. I love your blog's Celtic theme; may I have your permission to give my daughter the url? She has what she refers to as a "Celtic obsession" and is even heading out to university in Halifax to be closer to tartan and bagpipes! I'll look for you in class - you'll know me from my grey hair and bifocals!
Hi Frances - I think if we had all had a chance to discuss the white paper before writing the assignment i would have given myself permission to be even more scathing than I was in my review! I agree with you that it was just a sales pitch - I was just surprised how few of the comments posted on librarian blogs right after the paper was released seemed to recognize this. Check out my blog for a good citation about what public libraries 1.0 are actually good for!
Great work.
Post a Comment