We’ve done the courses, we’re flash with our flickr, faced the space, blah blah, social networking/ning/twitter/facebook/irc. All the fun of the fair. Do we still have a clue about our users, our patrons, are we talking to them or each other? Stephanie Rosalia (bugmenot.com) does and other folk do, but does it matter if we do or don’t?

I dunno if I’ve said it online, I’ve certainly said it offline…one of the coolest things about the whole, bloody library 2.0 movement…is that it’s got librarians thinking about what it is they bloody well do. It’s shifted a whole bunch of folk out of rutts (hmmm is that one t or two – can’t be arsed walking to the Shorter in the next room), some of their own making, some they’ve fallen into. Some folk will return to their rutts, others will become super librarians, others still, will do something else altogether.

What matters is that folk have had a shake, looked around, and gone hmmm…what next? Library 2.0 has been a useful tool to kick people into gear, into reassessing, into self evaluation. Where to next?

I’m interested in surveying folk in a few years time (always putting work off lazy bugger that I am) and seeing where they’re at. Seeing what they’re doing in the future now and whether they’d be doing that if 2.0 hadn’t come along. I’m interested in the effect of 2.0 as a catalyst for change.

Where do you think you’ll be in 5 years time ? How far have you come in the last year or two? How much further do you want to go?

There’s a PhD in that question alone I reckon. Nevermind the effect of professional change on personal change and vice versa…bugger that, it’s never possible to have a clear delineation of such…what’s interesting is the mix…