Building a Web 2.0 Library Website

Karen Coombs of Information Today offers “Building a Library Website on the Pillars of Web 2.0, a great look at how to create a very user friendly, content management system with social software, blogs, link logs, tagging, wikis, podcasts, feeds, and other web services.

“Web 2.0” is transforming the Web into a space that allows anyone to create and share information online-a space for collaboration, conversation, and interaction; a space that is highly dynamic, flexible, and adaptable.

Further discussion and reading led me to design six pillars of Web 2.0 that we wanted to use as the foundation for rebuilding our library Web site. These six pillars are as follows:

1. Radical decentralization
2. Small pieces loosely joined
3. Perpetual beta
4. Remixable content
5. User as contributor
6. Rich user experience

It’s a great step-by-step look at what a library, educational facility, or any business can do to take advantage of the new social networking, commonly called Web 2.0, putting emphasis on meeting customer’s needs rather than business needs.

In other words, the easier you make your customer’s interaction with your services, the more likely you are to build relationships with your customers, encouraging a solid base of customer loyalty.