"Library 2.0, information and digital literacies in the light of the contradictory nature of Web 2.0" by Tibor Koltay

It's interesting how the title of this article describes "Web 2.0" (putting my own feelings for that term aside) as being "contradictory [in] nature" ... On the one hand, the internet gives users the unprecedented ability to create and distribute information as they see fit; on the other hand, this opens up the possibility for misinformation and outright deception to proliferate at an alarming rate, as "the speed and easiness of creating texts allows half-blown ideas to appear as if they were the more well-formulated concepts, just like the ones we would encounter in print documents."

It is true that printed materials give the information found therein a certain level of "prestige" and authority; hey, if it's printed in a book, it's gotta be true, right? And yet, as more of our information is being delivered to us via the online format, there is a growing segment of the population that is giving that information the same level of prestige, whether it's been critically examined or not ("Hey, if it's printed in Wikipedia, it's gotta be true, right?") ...

Of course, it's not simply a case of "banning" social media tools and the information they provide from the library, in order to "protect" our patrons; that would be depriving them of a lot of useful information (Koltay cautions that librarians should "discover [social media's] use for purposes that properly serve different library constituencies"). Instead, libraries should be aware of both the "opportunities and threats" inherent within this technology, and educate their individual communities on the best ways to filter through that information in order to find the most relevant information possible.

"Amateurism" does not automatically equal "uneducated" or "misleading" (even the so-called "experts" get things wrong now and then), but at the same time people must turn a more critical eye towards such information ... It is in this way that librarians can serve a valuable function in the new information age, by acting as "managers, coaches, or trainers" for their patrons, by enhancing "their evaluation skills [through] information literacy and digital literacy."