Criticism

Skeptics are often criticize both Web 2.0 and library 2.0 as 'hype' or a 'craze' based on the dogmatic belief that technology holds the answers to our problems. To some extent this criticism is well placed. For example, Laura Coehn's blog post titled A Librarian's 2.0 Manifesto has raised the ire of ALA Councilor at Large, Mark C. Rosenzweig who described it as follows:

first of all, not so much a manifesto as an unconsciously parodic cross between a “12 Step Program,” the Catholic “Credo” and the Old Testament decalogue, written however naively in the current demotic style — which has become the inflated currency of our devalued culture — of wide-eyed religious fervor for being born-again in the ethers of the internet by letting the Savior of the WWW into our hearts, and aimed at promoting abandonment of any and all resistance, collective or personal, to the New Dispensation of “Web 2.0.”
(quoted in Litwin, R. 2007).

Coehn's post is indeed provocational. A set of 17 maxims that all begin with the phrase 'I will...' her manifesto does not leave a space for critical dialogue around the adoption of new technologies. While not all proponents of Library 2.0 are as devout as Cohen, it is worth while to look critically at something like library 2.0 which has so quickly risen in popularity.

While not entirely dismissing what has come to be know as library 2.0, others are wary of the phrase arguing that it lacks meaning. And some suggest the 2.0 is really nothing new at all. The idea that 2.0 is marked by a shift in the use of technology enabling social interaction on the web breaks down when one considers that the web itself has always been about communication. And the virtual communities of internet electronic bulletin boards actually predate the World Wide Web. To this end, critics assert that what is called Web 2.0 is simply the logical, 'natural' progression of a maturing set of technologies. Similarly with Library 2.0, critics such as Steven Cohen assert that the idea of empowering the user by making information as accessible as possible has always been the goal of libraries and what is known as library 2.0 is simply the application of new technologies to further this end. (quoted in Lawson, S. 2006).

Whether or not we agree on the meaning or relative importance of the term there are serious privacy implications to the the widespread adoption of 2.0 technologies in libraries.