Critical Evaluation of The Library 2.0 Gang

For my critical evaluation of a blog I decided to do “The Library 2.0 Gang” which can be found at this website.

Library 2.0 Gang is hosted by Richard Wallis. Richard Wallis has had more than 35 years in the computer information industry and is one of the main people in promoting, explaining, and applying new and emerging web and semantic web technologies in the library and information industry. The site has several contributors and is joined once a month by a guest who is relevant to one of the topics under discussion.

Library 2.0 Gang creates a blog every month along with a podcast (usually just under an hour in length) about new web 2.0 technologies and how it effects libraries. Previous blogs have been about Library Mashups, eBooks and eReaders, social software in libraries (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc), where libraries have came from to where libraries are headed in the future and the most recent post which is about the semantic web and linked data.

The blog goes into real depth on how different web 2.0 programs are going to change the shape of libraries. Because the blog goes into depth and have long discussions about web 2.0 programs I found that it is quite a long time having to sit at the computer listening to a 50 minute podcast. Also I found they didn’t explain what some web 2.0 programs are. For example I had no idea what the semantic web was so I found myself listening to the podcast for 5 minutes hoping they would explain it for me. I ended up having to do a bit of research on the net to find out what is was before I could understand what they were talking about in the podcast.
There is a search option to search the blog’s previous posts. The blog supplies an email address where you can send your ideas of topics the gang can talk about, where you can suggest guests that the gang can interview and new members or even just to say hello. The Library 2.0 Gang has a twitter account which is linked to the blog where you get updates on when they are recording a podcast and when a new post has been added to the blog.

The blog is really easy to navigate around and there are no ads flashing away which is a real big positive. This blog is for those who are interested in the way web 2.0 programs are changing the way libraries are today.

Wallis R, 2010, The Library 2.0 Gang, Talis USA, viewed 21st March 2010, http://librarygang.talis.com/