Web 2.0 in the Academic Library

Mahmood, K., & Richardson J.V. (2013). Impact of Web 2.0 technologies on academic libraries: A survey of ARL libraries. The Electronic Library, 31(4), 508 - 520.

In this paper, Mahmood and Richardson examined previous literature on the perception of Web 2.0 in various libraries around the world and conducted an original survey on Web 2.0 in academic libraries in the U.S. The studies in the previous literature showed an overall positive perception of Web 2.0 in libraries. Some of the technologies that these libraries used included social networking, blogs, RSS, podcasts, widgets, micro-blogging, social bookmarking, wikis, photo sharing, video sharing, and document sharing. The librarians felt that these were positive forces in the libraries because they maximize exposure, modernize the library image, promote specific content, create a collaborative community, reach a specific audience, increase relevancy to users, was proactive, was easy to implement, improved internal and external communications, and was low cost. Some problems that arose from Web 2.0 include taking too much time to maintain, too many social media features/tools to learn, and sometimes a low interest of users, restrictive internal organization policies, information security, and confidentiality issues.