Away from the Icebergs: row your library into the Web 2.0 environment

I DON?T THINK THERE?S ANY QUESTION THAT WE LIBRARIANS ARE WORKING hard, with the best intentions, to serve our users well in a world that has changed dramatically in the last decade. If the profession is a boat, then I think we?re all rowing pretty heroically. But I?m not sure we?re paying enough attention to the potential disasters that lie in our current path. In particular, there are three "icebergs" that I believe pose significant threats to our future success. All are remnants of a bygone information age, practices and attitudes that no longer make sense but which we have difficulty letting go. Our patrons have no such qualms, of course, as the emergence of Web 2.0 demonstrates.