The third and final area that I identified that potentially sums up ideas contained in the tag ‘Library 2.0′ is Usability.

Useful Participation

Michael Stephens suggests in his ALA Techsource blog post discussing ‘Library and Librarian 2.0′ that “The [2.0] library invites participation”. As a consequence of technological flexibility brought about by Web2.0 technologies, libraries are able to design resources that encourage increased user participation both in the creation of information resources and in the promotion and identification of these resources to others. Building systems that allow participatory engagement with library resources on the part of users can increase the usability and findability of these resources.

Though it is mentioned in one of the other reviews, the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Tags social bookmarking system is an excellent example of a way that libraries can harness users participatory involvement in digital content to add value to existing resources. Penn Tags extends its reach beyond library resources and out on to the wider web, and at the same time allows user metadata to be shared and distributed via RSS feeds. This kind of malleable resource is something that library patrons are increasingly eager to engage with. Ken Chad and Paul Miller observe in their whitepaper “Do libraries matter? The Rise of Library 2.0 ” that:

There is a real expectation amongst younger web users that demands they have a right to use, modify, and pass on content with which they come into contact.

Particularly important to usability in a Web2.0 environment is the concept of “mashups”, Chad and Miller write:

There’s a saying that the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. Web 2.0 applications buy into this idea completely. Individual components are made available to all application builders to ‘mix and match’ and create new value-added applications. In fact, a moderately skilled individual can combine (’mash-up’) these different components to quickly and easily create quite sophisitcated applications.

Many applications exist on the internet that allow users to easily create their own mashups by combining modifications the various APIs to make custom web pages of frequently used web resources. An excellent example of this is Netvibes, which I use as my homepage. It brings together on one nicely presented page my Gmail account , University Staff Account, my Writely Documents, my Del.ico.us bookmarks, Google search tools, as well as supporting Notetaking, To-Do lists, and custom RSS feeds. This last option would mean that, if I had a Penn Tags account, I could incorporate perhaps several RSS feeds from this library resources into my Netvibes homepage, and view updates when certain Tags I was interested in received new bookmarks, without needing to visit the library home page. Providing these kinds of facilities not only increases the visibility of library services to users, but it also helps to make these services more useful in users every day lives.