#15 The terrible 2(.0)'s (Tea for two)

Reading about the 2.0's reminds me of a couple of recent conversations with colleagues.

A colleague and I were discussing the changing face of reference collections - where hard copy resources are being replaced with online sources. A quick look at our reference collection had us wondering how long a hard copy reference collection would remain.

At the moment we seem to be in a transition period - where hard copy and soft copy resources co-exist but don't necessarily complement each other - some patrons prefer one format over the other.

We have one patron who comes in once or twice a week with the crossword from the Saturday Age. He spends a few hours each day trawling through the reference collection looking for the solutions. (he is probably more familiar with the ref section than some of the staff are).

He will happily look up an answer in the hard copy of Britannica, but using the computer (even if it is to use the online Britannica) is, to him, only one step removed from cheating.

I've shown him google and the online databases but he's not interested. I'm sure he's not the only one that feels like that.

In five, ten, years time he may not have any choice - the ref collection may well be mainly online.

I mean consider today's reference resources compared with ten years ago. The online environment means that the library's collections, and how we access them, is constantly changing and evolving.

A recent article in the Sydney Morning Herald titled Internet a surprise boon for books
looked at longstanding predictions that the internet would crush the book publishing industry with digital readers and online sales of used books. It noted that people seemed to want to be able to download music online but that they still wanted to own a physical book (or borrow it from a library I guess).

Local schools still set projects which specify that students must use a mix of sources - online, hard copy, reference encyclopedias etc.

As people become more familiar with the Internet should library online catalogues look more like web based search engines?

A lot of people are familiar with searching using a search engine such as google, but they struggle with the library catalogue - perhaps because it isn't as 'intuitive' as the google interface?

If you misspell a word or term in google you get, at the top of the results, a 'did you mean " option. In most library catalogues if you make a spelling mistake -that's it, you don't get a match (and you don't get an alternate spelling option - at least not in the system we use)

Libraries are looking at ways of getting themselves more noticed in the online environment - applications such as blogs, myspace, are very attractive as ways of taking the library to the wider population.

The fact that some public libraries have started using LibraryThing for libraries to enhance their catalogue (and to provide a link between the library catalogue and LibraryThing) shows just how powerful and effective the web can be.