Karl Bridges, Santa Barbara, CA, ABC-CLIO/Libraries Unlimited, 2012, 89 pp., US$35.00, ISBN 978-1-59158-816-0
The title of this book suggests that it will focus on Web 2.0 tools and ways in which these can be used in libraries to help understand and engage with clients in an age where finding information is just a click away. If the potential reader thinks he or she will gain substantial or new insights into this area, disappointment awaits. The book tells us that libraries need to use Web 2.0 technologies to understand more about their communities, but it never explicitly explains how. Instead, it situates libraries in terms of the broader technological and economic changes in society and discusses what roles libraries can continue to play, or must accept are no longer only theirs to claim – the main one being that libraries are not the only way clients receive their information.
There are five chapters in total, and the first and final chapters are of most interest. The book begins by giving some background on how ICTs have affected the way we have received our information over time. Bridges recognises that the pace of change is rapid and challenges libraries to keep up, with staff wrestling with their roles as managers and gatekeepers of information. The final chapter looks at the future of libraries. In our changing environment, libraries and librarians must remain flexible and open to new ways of working. With impending retirements, a more competitive workforce, the introduction of e-books and the new ways we receive information, libraries must keep ahead of change. They need a new model to drive their decision-making, and the Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action loop (a concept that was originally developed for military applications) is introduced and applied to examples in the information profession.
Although Bridges states that keeping up with change will keep libraries from becoming obsolete, at times he does paint a bleak picture, particularly in the second chapter ‘Internet Insecurity’, which looks at the impact of natural and man-made disasters on the business of libraries. His discussions of the impact of technology on libraries are interesting and provide some food for thought, but do seem only to touch the surface in many respects. Once again, the book lacks more practical advice on how new technologies can be applied to libraries. Although this is a large area to focus on, and the argument could be made that there are already many books that cover Web 2.0 and libraries, more could have been explored and expanded upon in this volume.
©2012, Daniel Giddens