# 17 & 18 - All things 2.0-ti-ful

This is cheating to an extent but I'm rolling the last 2 bits up into a single post...

So, Library 2.0 - in the end, the term is derivative from Web 2.0, which itself is pretty much about leveraging the power of networks for mass collaboration and conversation, be it direct (eg commenting on a blog, contributing to a wiki) or indirect (the aggregation of 'intentional' data such as Amazon's 'people who bought this also bought...' or tagging more generally - ie the basis behind the remark that the defining feature of a web 2.0 application is that it functions better the more people use it) - and particularly focussing on the web as a platform for facillitating these network effects.

Web 2.0 has been translated into Library 2.0 in a number of ways:
- how do we use Web 2.0 technologies in an incremental way to improve the way we do what we've always done
- how might we use Web 2.0 concepts about conversation and co-creation to re-think the library/user hierarchy
- let's use whatever cool technology we can lay our hands on (er, no)
- how do we become more user-centric (well yes, but to a large extent this question has been asked for the past 30-40 years, which is one of the reasons some commentators tend to think that all this Library 2.0 stuff is just old wine in new bottles)
- how do we use network technologies to get our content and services out "in the flow" of the user environment like never before, ie so that users encounter us in their preferred digital environment - accessing our journal articles through Google scholar, finding our special collections through Wikipedia, plugging our digital reference services into Facebook - the possibilities are enormous, if we are prepared to give up a bit more control over the way people use our content than we have been in the past).

What does it mean for SLV? Well, I'm sure many of these principles will show up in the new website, but there's plenty to think about just within AID - new approaches to online reference services, resource guides, online learning programs, internal knowledge management activities to name just a few things that have crossed my desk this week.

And what of the Learning 2.0 program? I've had a bit of fun even though I'd been using all these sites previously - the great thing from my perspective is that there is increasingly a collective understanding of web 2.0 tools and how they might be used, and I can see people incorporating this understanding into their work already - and as we press forward with various new initiatives it provides a better basis for AID staff not only to remake some of our existing services and content, but also to be more involved in other slv21 or web projects across the organisation.