Library Musings

I am reading Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky I am grateful to have found this book. I had gotten the impression (rightly or wrongly) from projects such as 23 Things, that the best way for me to understand Web 2.0 was to go forth and create my own blogs, wikis, etc.

Here Comes Everybody talks about the Power Curve, best known for the 80/20 application common to businesses, etc. According to the Power Curve, the first one or two blogs in an area will be significantly more successful than those from third position on down. Twenty percent of the blogs will have 80% of the readers. 80% will have only one reader. (And I sometimes think that reader is the person who is writing the blog–at least in my case.)

It doesn’t mean that keeping a blog is a bad thing, but it takes the pressure of trying to “sell” your blog to others off. I can now comfortably think of my blog as a place for my own musings and for my own reflection and remembrance on/of those musings. And I can concentrate more time on following the 20% of blogs that are successful and offer me a reading benefit.

I’ve also learned a lot about Wikipedia and why it works, as well as the concept of Wikis and why they have to have an interested audience even if it is small and temporary. (As in my YALSA class on young adult lit.)

There is also a disturbing comment about the (non-existent) future of librarianship in the book. I’ll need to consider that further. I know the idea has been discussed at length on LM-Net.

I have more of the book to read. I’ll see what else I can learn there.