I didn’t make it Computers in Libraries. I’ve NEVER made it to CiL, but there always seems to be good stuff coming out of that conference. JPRU has a post about her slides at CiL for an Academic Library 2.0 session. There were several great speakers on the panel. All the slide presentations are interesting. JPRU’s presentation, “Going Beyond the Great Idea: Getting buy-in and doing effective training for 2.0 projects” has one especially good point: collaboration still takes leaders.

To me that says we can offer all kinds of 2.0 tools to people, but we still need to suggest what it means. We need to establish a context in which 2.0 projects become significant for both the library and the library user. If we just say, “do whatever you want with it,” maybe there is no payoff for us, the librarians. If there is no payoff for us, then the service doesn’t grow and improve. That means something less for the library user. It’s a negative feedback loop. With the right leadership and context, it can become a positive feedback loop.