Article Note: On Evolving Librarians

Citation for the article:

Benson, Amy and Robert Favini. "Evolving Web, Evolving Librarian." Library Hi Tech News Number 7 (2006): 18-21.

Read via Emerald.

This article basically is a call for librarians to adapt and work with 2.0 technologies. As such, it is nothing really new. If you are already doing this, then you know the stuff in the article. If you don't, you may want to look at the article. There are some things I would like to jot down.

• "As searching the entire WWW becomes an experience tailored to the needs and interests of individuals, library users expect the same kind of experience when they visit the library's information space" (18). The catch, and this is mentioned in the article, is balancing patron privacy with service.
• "Giving users the option to receive only the information on topics that interest them is an important first step in personalizing the library user's experience" (19).
  
• "Libraries need to liberate the valuable data locked in their catalogs and use today's technologies to share it with and integrate it into other information sites and services" (20).
  

Much of the idea here is to make libraries more like commercial endeavors (i.e. Amazon). While I am not sold on that idea, this is still worth thinking about.