David Walker, Library Web Services Manager at California State University, argues that although we seem to be getting ourselves deeper and deeper into discussions about Library 2.0, “libraries have never really solved the fundamental problem from the days of ‘Library 1.0′ — namely, integration.”
This is why Roy Tennent of Library Journal often refers to Library 2.0 as “lipstick on a pig.” RSS feeds, tagging, blogs, and wikis are making the library “prettier,” but it’s still just a pig. Walker and Tennent are absolutely correct. Integration, the problem of Library 1.0, has never been solved. Library 2.0 tools may be cool, but perhaps library vendors should be working on developing better APIs for integration. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could put all of our catalogs and databases on one system that just works?
While I agree with Walker that integration remains a problem, I don’t see why we can’t work on 1.0 and 2.0 in parallel. Must we solve all of our integration problems first before we can offer Library 2.0 features to our users? In a perfect world, library systems integration would be ubiquitous, but that just isn’t so and won’t be for a long time. So in the meantime, why not work on both?
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