Are you being served?

After reading all five articles for this week’s lesson, I was not sure what I thought of them. I needed some mulling time. It seems to me that college and university librarians are the main audience for these articles and for the kinds of services they advocate. There’s value for public libraries as well but many of the Web 2.0 services do seem to be targeted at one particular demographic: college-age students. Events in Virginia earlier this week seem to bear this out. News reports repeatedly mentioned some of the ways college students are reaching out to each other during this tragedy: Facebook, blogs, IM, and Second Life. University and college libraries should be meeting their students where they are and serving their target demographic.
Public libraries serve a much wider range of patrons and some of them may be interested in Web 2.0 services and others may not. I’d love to see our library embrace Web 2.0 ideas and incorporate them into a thoughtful, well-rounded and diverse service plan that meet the needs of all our patrons.