Lib: “Oh we want to use this product”
IT: “Uh…how are you planning to populate that with data?”

From there I get one of two responses. Either:

a) Lib: “Oh, we didn’t think of that”

or

b) Lib: “Oh it uses LDAP, we use LDAP so we will just use LDAP”

…and of course you can replace “populate that with data” with other large scale problems (i.e. “Integrate that with our authentication infrastructure”, “Plan for failover with that”, “Secure that”, etc..) and “LDAP” can be replaced with a bunch of other poorly understood technologies or the perennial “lots of other institutions use this so why can’t we?”

I don’t really mean to pick on our Library here because this problem is spread across our institution but if my IT dept is pushing back its because there is something technically wrong with your approach and we aren’t in the business of delivering poor solutions.

As for the nomenclature (L2)? Considering the author didn’t say much about what exactly they mean it seems a bad idea to invent terms that don’t really say very much (or say altogether too much for that matter)
Just saying “mock-ups, prototypes, RSS feeds, collaborative development, memes, and library blogs” is actually far less information, from an implementation POV than you think. If you want to be taken seriously by an IT Department you need to provide a requirements list, show them wireframes or a project plan. Because, if they are anything like the shops I’m familiar with every single day they get someone who tells them about their big (entirely unimplementable) idea. It’s up to you to convince them that you’re different.

Speaking as a network administrator for a library, this statement is freaking me out. What exactly you mean by this? If a thrust toward a more technologically integrated library is being fought by the IT department, shouldn’t they be asking why the IT department feels it’s a bad idea, instead of seeing them as an obstacle?

I get requests all the time for instant messaging, gaming machines, cd burners, open shares for people to download to, word processing machines with internet/floppy/usb access, and more. What I’d like to know is twofold: who’s paying for it and who’s got the plan to protect it? I see a lot of pom-pom waving for all the features of L2, but little concern for the steps required to secure this software, much of which is riddled with security vulnerabilities. Even companies that claim to offer fully protected OPAC systems (like Useful’s Discover solution) are highly suspect. If our shrinking budgets can barely keep up with the cost of licensing, firewalls, spam filters, etc., how can we be expected to pay for anything else. This L2 thing sounds great on paper, but it would sound even better if we could even begin to pay for it.

My occasional Library 2.0-blogging-tennis partner John Blyberg over at Ann Arbour District Library agrees with me about how arbitrary the “Library 2.0″ term is. It does seems somewhat arbitrary that a term like “Library 2.0″ can be coined, snatch…