exercise # 10

I think that the dramatic thing about Web 2.0 is that it has changed the way we use the Internet. Internet users are no longer just the consumers of information, they are its creators. The emergence of Social media sites (YouTube, Snapfish), social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace) news sites (Oh My News, which has over 40,000 citizen journalists), podcasts, and Wikis has changed the construction and culture of the Web from one being built by a few thousand authors to one built by millions. We now want to control our media and now have enormous publishing power.

When I think back to the early 90's - before Google became a verb- I just could not have envisaged how the Internet could be such an interactive medium. It was exciting enough to be able to search an online encyclopedia and be able to jump from article to article with a click of a mouse. But now we have the tools to be able to contribute to online encyclopedias ourselves, and connect with our library users in new interactive ways. The National Library has its own MySpace page for instance and I think that our users will expect more and more of an electronic, 24/7, on demand service from us. Role on the virtual branch- but I'm not sure that I want to be rostered onto the 10pm - 6am shift!