Assignment # 7

Just finished up the first part of the assignment and will have to do the rest at another time.
Meredith Fargas's article reaffirms my thinking about the various tools of Web 2.0 that we have looked at so far. As I was going through the assignments I kept asking myself, would the patrons use this. In most cases I felt the answer was no. Our clients for the most part use our services for entertainment -reading, listening or watching movies. Most of the clients who come to the library to use our computers use them for social purposes - to check their emails, chat with their friends on msn or facebook. Some do use the computers for research and writing their assignments but more and more patrons have their own computers at home. Like the cellphone, the computer is becoming a household necessity.
When I look at the patrons who come into the library, these patrons come to the library to get books for reading. Some use our non-fiction as reference. Patrons are pleased with the idea they can order books from home, renew their books and then come to the library to pick them up.
So for me, unless we can change our patrons thinking that the library is more then a book lending facility, our patrons will continue to think of the library as just that.
Like Fargas points out, we need to continue to assess what the patron needs and wants and not assume that if we offer them a service, they will use it. In my opinion, it would be more beneficial to see what our patrons are using the computers for and to be knowledgeable of the tools they are using so that we can assist them if they run into problems. An example of this is we had a patron who went onto ebay and was checking out prices and wanting to make bids. None of us at the library had any exposure to ebay and so we were not able to help the patron.
Another example would be facebook. Recently they have changed the interface of facebook and there are so many different applications that it gets quite confusing. Would it not be better for librarians to learn all of the facets of facebook so that if a patron ran into problems we could help them?
I guess basically what I am saying is that Librarians should be aware of the newest tools but should learn only those that the patrons use and want.