Web 2.0/Librarian

What's it mean to me? As a librarian? As I have mentioned in a couple of posts, this collaboration among users is different than what we older librarians went to school for. We were (well, not THE dispensers of knowledge or facts or data but) the facilitators for our users. Now, things have changed -- and that's okay -- but we have a new role and older role in the collaborative community. Other writers have used "tour guides", "harnessors of collective intelligence", "trainers" to describe the librarians new role in the collaborative effort. These are all right and, yet, alright. It's all these and still (not to be stubborn!) as facilitators where we can do the most good. Users add value to the ultimate answer, we provide the string. The speaker from OCLC last year at a SEFLIN luncheon summed it up best: "people FIND things on the Internet; librarians SEARCH on the Internet. You, as librarians, know that difference.