Alan Gray has a post on his new blog (subscribe now) about Library 1.0 vs Library 2.0.

Customer Service is Library 1.0. Period. Full stop. You need to go back to Go if you think putting in some Web 2.0 tools, and taking notes at Jenny and Michael's Road Show, will get you finally to the point of doing the basic things as treating all your customers with respect and appreciation.

I couldn’t agree more, and it’s one of the reasons I’ve been harking on policies and other non-technology problems lately. I must point out, however, that the attempts to implement some of these tools are helping shed light on some of the problems. Some could argue that changing to be more customer service oriented is Library 2.0 and a major change. My counter is that your just farther behind and really need to fix the Library 1.0 things as well and they should probably have higher priority. Having blogs and other outreach won’t help considerably if there are active policy barriers preventing people from using the library. Alan also touches on the fact that these changes can often be done quickly and have immediate affects, unlike some of the longer planning cycles related to technology.

I’ve talked to Alan in the past and his library has some great ideas and I’m expecting that they will likely be used as an example of good practices more and more. I feel more and more shame for not being able to make it to Library Camp East. If you even can remotely swing it I recommend trying to attend. My funds just don’t allow.

It’s important to remember that it’s the communication with patrons that matters, not the use of blogs themselves. You can throw together tons of blogs, flickr accounts and other tools and not really accomplish anything when it comes to customer service. Identify your problems and then see what technologies or solutions fit.