paRticipatoRY nEtWoRks  |  LankEs, siLvERstEin, anD nicHoLson   17

Author iD box for 2 column layout

Column Title Editor

The goal of the technology brief is to familiarize library 
decision-makers with the opportunities and challenges of 
participatory networks. In order to accomplish this goal 
the brief is divided into four sections (excluding an over-
view and a detailed statement of goal):

■  a conceptual framework for understanding and eval-
uating participatory networks;

■ a discussion of key concepts and technologies in par-
ticipatory networks drawn primarily from Web 2.0 
and Library 2.0;

■ a merging of the conceptual framework with the tech-
nological discussion to present a roadmap for library 
systems development; and

■ a set of recommendations to foster greater discussion 
and action on the topic of participatory networks 
and, more broadly, participatory librarianship.

This summary will highlight the discussions in each of 
these four topics. For consistency, the section numbers 
and titles from the full brief are used.

K
nowledge is created through conversation. Libraries 
are in the knowledge business. Therefore, libraries 
are in the conversation business. Some of those 

conversations span millennia, while others only span a 
few seconds. Some of these conversations happen in real 
time. In some conversations, there is a broadcast of ideas 
from one author to multiple audiences. Some conversa­
tions are sparked by a book, a video, or a Web page. Some 
of these conversations are as trivial as directing someone 
to the bathroom. Other conversations center on the foun­
dations of ourselves and our humanity.

It may be odd to start a technology brief with such 
seemingly abstract comments. Yet, without this firm, if 
theoretical, footing, the advent of Web 2.0, social net­
working, Library 2.0, and participatory networks seems a 
clutter of new terminology, tools, and acronyms. In fact, 
as will be discussed, without this conceptual footing, 
many library functions can seem disconnected, and the 
field that serves lawyers, doctors, single mothers, and 
eight­year olds (among others) fragmented.

The scale of this technology brief is limited; it is to 
present library decision­makers with the opportunities 
and challenges of participatory networks. It is only a 
single piece of a much larger puzzle that seeks to pres­
ent a cohesive framework for libraries. This framework 
not only will fit tools such as blogs and wikis into their 
offerings (where appropriate), but also will show how a 
more participatory, conversational approach to libraries 

in general can help libraries better integrate current and 
future functions. Think of this document as an overview 
or introduction to participatory librarianship. Readers 
will find plenty of examples and definitions of Web 2.0 
and social networking later in this article. However, to 
jump right into the technology without a larger frame­
work invites the rightful skepticism of a library organiza­
tion that feels constantly buffeted by new technological 
advances. In any environment with no larger conceptual 
founding, to measure the importance of an advance in 
technology or practice selection of any one technology 
or practice is nearly arbitrary. Without a framework, the 
field becomes open to the influence of personalities and 
trendy technology. Therefore, it is vital to ground any 
technological, social, or policy conversation into a larger, 
rooted concept. As Susser said, “to practice without 
theory is to sail an uncharted sea; theory without practice 
is not to set sail at all.”1 For this paper, the chart will be 
conversation theory.

The core of this article is in four sections:

■ a conceptual framework for understanding and eval­
uating participatory networks;

■ a discussion of key concepts and technologies in par­
ticipatory networks drawn primarily from Web 2.0 
and Library 2.0;

■ a merging of the conceptual framework with the 
technological discussion to present a sort of roadmap 
for library systems development; and

■ a set of recommendations to foster greater discussion 
and action on the topic of participatory networks 
and, more broadly, participatory librarianship.

It is recommended that the reader follow this order to 
get the big picture; however, the second section should be 
a useful primer on the language and concepts of partici­
patory networks. 

■ Library as a facilitator of conversation
Let us return to the concept that knowledge is created 
through conversation. This notion stretches back to 
Socrates and the Socratic method. However, the specific 
foundation for this statement comes from conversation 
theory, a means of explaining cognition and how people 
learn.2 It is not the purpose of this article to provide a 

R. David Lankes (jdlankes@iis.syr.edu) is Director and Associate 
Professor, Joanne silverstein (jlsilver@iis.syr.edu) is research 
Professor, and scott nicholson (scott@scottnicholson.com) 
is Associate Professor at the information institute of Syracuse, 
(N.Y.) Syracuse university’s School of information Studies.

Participatory Networks:  
The Library As Conversation

R. David Lankes, Joanne  
Silverstein, and Scott Nicholson



18   inFoRmation tEcHnoLoGY anD LiBRaRiEs  |  DEcEmBER 200718   inFoRmation tEcHnoLoGY anD LiBRaRiEs  |  DEcEmBER 2007

detailed description of conversation theory, a task already 
admirably accomplished by Pask. Rather, let us use the 
theory as a structure upon which to hang an exploration 
of participatory networking and, more broadly, participa­
tory librarianship. 

The core of conversation theory is simple: people 
learn through conversation. Different communities have 
different standards for conversations, from the scientific 
community’s rigorous formalisms, to the religious com­
munity’s embedded meaning in scripture, to the some­
times impenetrable dialect of teens. The point remains, 
however, that different actors establish meaning through 
determining common definitions and building upon 
shared concepts.

The library has been a place where we facilitate con­
versations, though often implicitly. The concept of learn­
ing through conversation is evidenced in libraries in such 
large initiatives as information literacy and teaching criti­
cal thinking skills (using such meta­cognitive approaches 
as self­questioning), and in the smaller events of book 
groups, reference interviews, and speaker series. Library 
activities such as building collections of artifacts (the tan­
gible products of conversation) inform scholars’ research 
through a formal conversation process where ideas are 
supported with evidence and methods. Similarly, pres­
ervation efforts, perhaps of wax cylinders with spoken 
word content or of ancient maps that embody an ongo­
ing dialogue about the shape and nature of the physical 
world, seek to save, or at least document, important 
conversations. 

Common use of the word “conversation” is com­
pletely in accordance with the use of the term in conver­
sation theory. The term is, however, more specifically 
defined as an act of communication and agreement 
between a set of agents. So, a conversation can be 
between two people, two organizations, two countries, 
or even within an individual. How can a conversation 
take place within an individual? Educators and school 
librarians may be familiar with the term “metacogni­
tion,” or the act of reflecting on one’s learning.3 Yet, even 
the most casual reader will be familiar with the concept 
of debating oneself (“if I go right, I’ll get there faster, but 
if I go left I can stop by Jim’s . . .”). The point is that a 
conversation is with at least two agents trying to come 
to an understanding. Also note that those two agents can 
change over time. So, while Socrates and Plato are dead, 
the conversation they started about the nature of knowl­
edge and the world is carried forward by new genera­
tions of thinkers—same conversation, different agents. 

People converse, organizations converse, states con­
verse, societies converse. The requirements, in the terms 
of conversation theory, are two cognitive systems seek­
ing agreement. The results of these conversations, what 
Pask would call “cognitive entanglements,” are books, 
videos, and artifacts that either document, expand, or 

result from conversations.4 So, while one cannot con­
verse with a book, that book certainly can be a starting 
point for many conversations within the reader and 
within a larger community.

If the theory is that conversation creates knowledge, the 
library community has added a corollary: the best knowl­
edge comes from an optimal information environment, 
one in which the most diverse and complete information 
is available to the conversant(s). Library ethics show an 
implicit understanding of this corollary in the advocacy 
of intellectual freedom and unfettered access. Libraries 
seek to create rich environments for knowledge and have 
taken the stance that they are not in the job of arbitrating 
the conversations that occur or the appropriateness of the 
information used to inform those conversations. As will be 
discussed later, this belief in openness of conversations will 
have some far­reaching implications for the library collec­
tion and is an ideal that can never truly be met. For now, 
the reader may take away that conversation theory is very 
much in line with current and past library practice, and it 
also shows a clear trajectory for the future.

This viewpoint’s value is not just theoretical; it has 
real consequences and uses. For example, much of library 
evaluation has been based on numeric counts of tangible 
outputs: books circulated, collection size, reference 
transactions, and so on. Yet this quantitative approach 
has been frustrating to many who feel they are count­
ing outcomes but not getting at true impact of library 
service. Librarians may ask themselves, “Which num­
bers are important . . . and why?” If libraries focused on 
conversations, there might be some clarity and cohesion 
between statistics and other outcomes. Suddenly, the 
number of reference questions can be linked to items cat­
aloged or to circulation numbers . . . they are all markers 
of the scope and scale of conversations within the library 
context. This approach might enable the library com­
munity to better identify important conversations and 
demonstrate direct contributions to these conversations 
across functions. For example, a school district identifies 
early literacy as important. There is a discussion about 
public policy options, new programs, and school goals 
to achieve greater literacy in K–5. The library should be 
able to track two streams in this conversation. The first 
is the one libraries are accustomed to counting; that is, 
the library’s contribution to K–5 literacy (participation 
in book talks, children’s events, circulation of children’s 
books, reference questions, and  so on). But the library 
also can document and demonstrate how it furthered 
the conversation about children’s literacy in general. It 
could show the resources provided to community offi­
cials. It could show the literacy pathfinders that were 
created. The point of this example is that the library is 
both participant in the conversation (what we do to pro­
mote early literacy) and facilitator of conversation (what 
we do to promote public discourse).



aRticLE titLE  |  autHoR   19paRticipatoRY nEtWoRks  |  LankEs, siLvERstEin, anD nicHoLson   19

The theoretical discussion leads us to a discussion 
about the second topic of this technology brief: pragmatic 
aspects of the knowledge as conversation approach, or 
a participatory approach, as it will be called. As new 
technologies are developed and deployed in the current 
environment of limited resources, there must be some 
means of evaluating their utility. A technology’s util­
ity is appropriately measured against a given library’s 
mission, which is, in turn, developed to respond to the 
needs of the community that library serves. First, how­
ever, let us identify some of the new technologies and 
describe them briefly. 

■ Participatory networking, social networks, and Web 2.0
Let us now move from the theoretical to the opera­
tional. The impetus behind this article is the relatively 
recent emergence of a new group of Internet services 
and capabilities. Suddenly, terms such as wiki, blog, 
mashup, Web 2.0, and biblioblogosphere have become 
commonplace. As with any new wave of technological 
creation, these terms can seem ambiguous. They also 
come wrapped in varying amounts of hype. They may 
all, however, be grouped under the phenomenon of par­
ticipatory networking. 

While we now have a conceptual framework to 
evaluate these technologies that support participatory 
networking (for example, do they further conversa­
tions), we still need to know the basics of the terminol­
ogy and technologies. 

This section outlines key concepts in the pragmatics of 
participatory networking. The section after this one will 
join the theoretical and operational to outline key chal­
lenges and opportunities for the library world. We begin 
with Web 2.0.

Web 2.0

Much of what we call participatory networking, at least the 
technological foundation of it, stems from developments in 
Web 2.0.5 As with many buzzwords, the exact definition of 
Web 2.0 is not clear. It is more an aggregation of concepts 
that range from software development (loosely coupled 
Application Programming Interfaces [APIs] and the ease 
of incorporating features across platforms) to abstrac­
tions (the user is the content). What pervades the Web 2.0 
approach is the notion that Internet services are increas­
ingly facilitators of conversations. The following sections 
describe some of the characteristics of Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 characteristic: social networks
A core concept of Web 2.0 is that people are the content 
of sites; that is, a site is not populated with information 

for users to consume. Instead, services are provided to 
individual users for them to build networks of friends 
and other groups (professional, recreational, and so on). 
The content of a site, then, comprises user­provided infor­
mation that attracts new members of an ever­expanding 
network. Examples include:

■ Flickr. Flickr (www.flickr.com) provides users with 
free Web space to upload images and create photo 
albums. Users then can share these photos with friends 
or with the public at large. Flickr facilitates the creation 
of shared photo galleries around themes and places. 

■ The Cheshire Public Library. The Teen Book Blog 
(http://cpltbb.wordpress.com) at the Cheshire Public 
Library offers book reviews created only by the stu­
dents who use the library.

■ Memorial Hall Library. The Memorial Hall Library 
in Andover, Massachusetts, offers podcasts of poetry 
contests in which the content is created by students 
(www.mhl.org/teens/audio/index.htm).

■ Libraries in MySpace. MySpace searches show that 
there are MySpace sites for hundreds of individual 
libraries and scores of library groups. Alexandrian 
Public Library (APL), for example, has established 
a site at MySpace (www.myspace.com/teensatapl). 
This practice is growing among public libraries and 
is an attempt to reach out to users in their preferred 
online environments. In this venue, the more friends 
a library’s MySpace site has, the more successful it 
may be considered. As of this writing, APL had sev­
enty­five friends and fifteen comments. The Brooklyn 
College Library had 2,195 friends and 270 comments.

Web 2.0 characteristic: wisdom of crowds
There has been some research into the quality of mass 
decision­making.6 That research shows how remarkably 
accurate groups are in their judgments. Web 2.0 pools 
large groups of users to comment on decisions. This 
aggregation of input is facilitated by the ready availabil­
ity of social networking sites. Certainly, this approach of 
community organization and verification of knowledge 
also has its detractors. Many, for example, question the 
wisdom seen in some entries of Wikipedia. Yet, recent 
articles have compared this mass editing process favor­
ably to traditional sources of information, such as the 
Encyclopedia Britannica.7 Examples include:

■ eBay. eBay has perhaps the most studied and copied 
community policing and reputation systems. All 
buyers and sellers can be rated. The aggregation of 
many users’ experiences create a feedback score that 
is equivalent to a group credibility rating (see figure 
1). These kinds of group feedback systems can now 
be seen in most major Internet retailers.

■ LibraryThing. LibraryThing.com makes book recom­



20   inFoRmation tEcHnoLoGY anD LiBRaRiEs  |  DEcEmBER 200720   inFoRmation tEcHnoLoGY anD LiBRaRiEs  |  DEcEmBER 2007

mendations based on the collective intelligence of all 
users of the site. The greater the pool of collective 
intelligence, the more information available to the 
user for decision­making.

■ The Diary Project. The Diary Project Library (www.
diaryproject.com) is a non­profit organization that 
encourages teens to write about their day­to­day 
experiences growing up. The goal of this site is to 
encourage communication among teens of all cul­
tures and backgrounds, provide peer­to­peer support, 
stimulate discussion, and generate feedback that can 
help ease some of the concerns teens encounter along 
the way and let them know that they are not alone. 
To that end, the site comprises thousands of entries in 
twenty­four categories. Because of the great number 
of entries, most youth can find helpful materials.

Web 2.0 characteristic: loosely coupled apis
An API provides a set of instructions (messages) that a 
programmer can use to communicate between applica­
tions. APIs allow programmers to incorporate one piece 
of software they may not be able to directly manipulate 
(code) into another. For example, Google Maps has made 
a public API that allows Web page designers to include 
satellite images into their Web pages with little more 
than a latitude and longitude.8 APIs vary in their ease 
of integration. Loosely coupled APIs allow for very easy 
integration using high­level scripting languages such as 
Javascript9. Examples include:

■ Google Maps. Google Maps displays street or sat­
ellite maps showing markers on specific locations 
provided by an external source with simple sets of 
longitudes and latitudes. It becomes extremely easy 
to create Geographic Information Systems with little 
knowledge of GIS principles.

■ Flickr. Flickr provides easy means to integrate hosted 
images into other Web pages or applications (as with 
a Google Map that shows images taken at a specific 
location).

■ YouTube. YouTube (www.youtube.com) provides 
users with the capability to upload and comment 
upon video on the Internet. It also allows for easy 
integration of the videos into other Web pages and 
blogs. With a simple line of HTML code, anyone can 
access streaming video for their content.

Web 2.0 characteristic: mashups
Mashups are combinations of APIs and data that result 
in new information resources and services.10 This ease 
of incorporation has led to an assumption of a “right to 
remix.” In the world of open source software and the 
creative commons, the right to remix refers to a grow­
ing expectation among Internet users that they are not 
limited by the interfaces and uses presented to them by a 

single organization. Examples include:

■ ChicagoCrime.org. An often­cited example of a 
mashup is ChicagoCrime.org, which uses Google 
Maps to plot crime data for the city of Chicago. Users 
can now see exactly which street corner had the most 
murders. Figure 2 shows a marker at the location of 
every homicide in Chicago from November 2, 2005, 
to August 2, 2006.

■ Book Burro. Book Burro (http://bookburro.org/
about.html) “is a Web 2.0 extension for Firefox and 
Flock. When it senses you are looking at a page that 
contains a book, it will overlay a small panel which 
when opened lists prices at online bookstores such 
as Amazon, Buy, Half (and many more) and whether 
the book is available at your library.”

■ Library Lookup. The MIT Library LookUp 
Greasemonkey Script for Firefox (http://libraries.
mit.edu/help/lookup.html) searches MIT’s Barton 
catalog from an Amazon book screen. 

Web 2.0 characteristic: permanent betas
The concept of a permanent beta is, in part, a realization 
that no software is ever truly complete so long as the user 
community is still commenting upon it. For example, 
Google does not release services from beta until it has 
achieved a sufficient user base, no matter how fixed 
the underlying source code is.11 Permanent beta also 
is a design strategy. Large applications are broken into 
smaller constituent parts that can be manipulated sepa­
rately. This allows large applications to be continually 

Figure 1. A seller’s profile shows a potential buyer the eBay com-
munity’s current estimation of a seller’s credibility.



aRticLE titLE  |  autHoR   21paRticipatoRY nEtWoRks  |  LankEs, siLvERstEin, anD nicHoLson   21

developed by a more diverse and distributed community 
(as in open source). Examples include:

■ Google Labs. Google has a site named “Google Labs” 
(http://labs.google.com) that puts out company­
generated tools and services. In fact, part of a Google 
employee’s work time is dedicated to creating the 
resources and tools through personal projects and 
exploration. These tools and services remain a part of 
the “lab” until they are finished and have sufficient 
user bases. Projects (see figure 3) range from the 
simple (Google Suggest, which provides a dropdown 
box of possible search queries as you being to type 
your search terms) to the extensive (Google Maps, 
which started as a Google Lab project).

■ MIT Libraries. The MIT Libraries are experimenting 
with new technologies to help make access to informa­
tion easier. The tools below are offered to the public 
with an appeal for feedback and additional tools, and 
the there is a permanent address designed just to collect 
feedback from the beta­phase tools, which include:

■ The New Humanities Virtual Browsery, which 
highlights new books and incorporates an RSS 
feed, the ability to comment on books, links to 
book reviews, availability information, and links 
to other books by the same author.

■ The LibX—MIT Edition (http://libraries.mit.
edu/help/libx.html), which is a Firefox toolbar 
that allows users to search the Barton catalog, 
Vera, Google Scholar, the SFX FullText Finder, 
and other search tools; it embeds links to MIT­
only resources in Amazon, Barnes & Noble, 
Google Scholar, and NYT Book Reviews. 

■ The Dewey Research Advisor Business and 
Economics Q&A (http://libraries.mit.edu/help/
dra.html), which provides starting points for 
specific research questions in the fields of busi­
ness, management, and economics. 

Web 2.0 characteristic: software gets better the more 
people use it
An increasing number of Web 2.0 sites emphasize social 
networks, where these services gain value only as they 
gain users. Malcolm Gladwell recounts this principle and 
the work of Kevin Kelly with an earlier telecommunica­
tions network, the network of fax machines connected to 
the phone system:

The first fax machine ever made . . . cost about $2,000 
at retail. But it was worth nothing because there was 
no other fax machine for it to communicate with. The 
second fax machine made the first fax machine more 
valuable, and the third fax made the first two more 
valuable, and so on. . . . When you buy a fax machine, 
then, what you are really buying is access to the entire 

fax network—which is infinitely more valuable than 
the machine itself.12

With social networking sites, and all sites that seek to 
capitalize on user input (reviews, annotations, profiles, 
etc.), the true value of each site is defined by the number 
of people it can bring together. A classic example of this 
characteristic is Amazon. Amazon sells books and other 
merchandise, but, in reality, Amazon is very much about 
the marketing of information. Amazon gains tremendous 
value by allowing its users to review and rate items. The 
more people use Amazon and the more they comment, 
the more visibility these active users gain and the more 
credibility markers they take on.

Web 2.0 characteristic: folksonomies
A folksonomy is a classification system created in a 
bottom­up fashion with no central coordination. This 
differs from the deductive approach of such classifica­
tions systems as the Dewey Decimal System, where the 
world of ideas is broken into ten nominal classes.13 It also 
differs from other means of developing classifications 
where some central authority determines if a term should 
be included. In a folksonomy, the members of a group 
simply attach terms (or tags) to items (such as photos or 
blog postings), and the aggregate of these terms is seen as 
the classification. What emerges is a classification scheme 
that prioritizes common usage (the most­used tags) over 
semantic clarity (if most people use “car,” but some use 
“cars,” they are seen as different terms, and the tag “auto­
mobile” has no real relationship within the aggregate 
classification). Examples include:

Figure 2: Screenshot of Chicagocrime.org



22   inFoRmation tEcHnoLoGY anD LiBRaRiEs  |  DEcEmBER 200722   inFoRmation tEcHnoLoGY anD LiBRaRiEs  |  DEcEmBER 2007

■ PennTags. PennTags (http://tags.library.upenn.edu/
help) is a social bookmarking tool for locating, orga­
nizing, and sharing one’s favorite online resources. 
Members of the Penn Community can collect and 
maintain URLs, links to journal articles, and records 
in Franklin, the online catalog, and VCat, the online 
video catalog. Once resources are compiled, users 
can organize them by assigning tags (free­text key­
words) or by grouping them into projects according 
to specific preferences. PennTags also can be used 
collaboratively, as it acts as a repository of the varied 
interests and academic pursuits of the Penn com­
munity, and a user can find topics and other users 
related to his or her own favorite online resources. 

■ Hillsdale Teen Library. The Hillsdale Teen Library 
(www.flickr.com/photos/hillsdalelibraryteens) uses 
Flickr to post pictures of events at the Hillsdale Teen 
Library (figure 4). The resulting tag view is repre­
sented in figure 5. These tags allow users to easily 
retrieve the images in which they are interested. 

There are more characteristics of Web 2.0, but these 
give some overall concepts.

core new technologies: aJaX and Web services

As we have just discussed, Web 2.0 is little more than set of 
related concepts, albeit with a lot of value being currently 
attached to these concepts. These concepts are supported 
by two underlying technologies that have facilitated Web 
2.0 development and brought a substantially new (and 
improved) user experience to the Web. The first is AJAX, 
which allows a more desktop­like experience for users. 
The second is the advent of Web services. These technolo­
gies are not necessary for Web 2.0 concepts, but they have 
made Web 2.0 sites much more compelling.

aJaX
AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML.14 
It is a set of existing Web technologies brought together. 
At the most basic, AJAX allows a browser (the part the 
user interacts with) and a server (where the data resides) 
to send data back and forth without needing to refresh 
the entire Web page being worked on. Think about the 
Web sites you work with. You click on a link, the browser 
freezes and waits for the data, then draws it on the screen. 
Early versions of such sites as MapQuest would show a 
map. If you wanted to zoom into the map, you would 
press a zoom icon and wait while the new map, and 
the rest of the Web page was redrawn. Compare this to 
Google Maps, where you click in the middle of a map and 
drag left or right and the map moves dynamically. We are 
used to this kind of interaction in desktop applications. 
Click and drag has become second nature on the desktop, 
and AJAX is making it second nature on the Web, too.

Another AJAX advantage is that it is open and 
requires only light programming skills. Javascript on 
the client and almost any server­side scripting language 
(such as active server pages or PHP) are easily accessible 
languages. This fact allows for both fast development and 
easier integration with existing systems. As an example, 
it should now be easier to bring more interactive Web 
interfaces to existing online catalogs. 

Web services
Web services allow for software­to­software interactions 
on the Web.15 Using Web protocols and XML, applications 
exchange queries and information in order to facilitate 
the larger functioning of a system. One example would 
be a system that uses an ISBN number to query multiple 
online catalogs and commercial vendors for availability 
(and price) of a book. This simple process might be part of 
a much larger library catalog that shows users a book and 
its availability. The point is, that unlike federated search 
systems such as Z39.50, Web services are small. They 
also tend to be lightweight (that is, limited in what they 
do), and are aggregated for greater functionality. This is 
the technological basis for the loosely coupled APIs dis­
cussed previously.

Library 2.0

Library 2.0 is a somewhat diffuse concept. Walt Crawford, 
in his extended essay “Library 2.0 and ‘Library 2.0,’” 
found sixty­two different (and often contradictory) views 
and seven distinct definitions of Library 2.0.16 It is no 
wonder that people are confused. However, it is natural 
for emerging ideas and groups to function in an environ­

Figure 3: Screenshot of current google Lab projects



aRticLE titLE  |  autHoR   23paRticipatoRY nEtWoRks  |  LankEs, siLvERstEin, anD nicHoLson   23

ment of high ambiguity. For use in this technology brief, 
the authors see Library 2.0 as an attempt to apply Web 2.0 
concepts (and some longstanding beliefs for greater com­
munity involvement) to the purpose of the library. 

In the words of Ormsby, “The purpose of a library is 
not to . . . showcase new gadgetry . . . ; rather, it is to make 
possible that instant of insight when all the facts come 
together in the shape of new knowledge.”17 In the case of 
Library 2.0, the new gadgetry discussed in the previous 
section comprises a group of software applications. How 
the applications are used will determine whether they 
support Ormsby’s “instant of insight.” Many libraries 
and librarians already are pursuing this goal. Some, for 
instance, are using blogs to reach other librarians, their 
own users (on their own Web sites), and potential users 
(using MySpace and other online communities). They are 
using wikis to deliver reports, teach information literacy, 
and serve as repositories. One has developed an API that 
allows WordPress posts to be directly integrated into 
a library catalog. Clearly, the Internet and newer tools 
that empower users seem to be aligned with the library 
mission. After all, librarians blogging and allowing the 
catalog to be mashed up can be seen as an extension of 
current information services.

But this abundance of new applications poses a 
challenge. Given the speed with which new tools are 
invented, librarians may find it difficult to create strate­
gies that include all the desired services that they make 
possible. For every new application that becomes avail­
able, library administrators must decide whether it can 
serve the library, how to use it, and how to find additional 
resources to manage it (for example, “Now we can do 
this. But why should we?”). This problem stems from 
focusing excessively on the technology. 

Librarians should instead focus on the phenomena 
made possible by the technology. Most important of these 
phenomena, the library invites participation. As Chad 
and Miller state:

Library 2.0 facilitates and encourages a culture of 
participation, drawing upon the perspectives and con­
tributions of library staff, technology partners and the 
wider community. Library 2.0 means harnessing this 
type of participation so that libraries can benefit from 
increasingly rich collaborative cataloguing efforts, such 
as including contributions from partner libraries as 
well as adding rich enhancements, such as book jackets 
or movie files, to records from publishers and others. 

Library 2.0 is about encouraging and enabling a 
library’s community of users to participate, contribut­
ing their own views on resources they have used and 
new ones to which they might wish access. 

With Library 2.0, a library will continue to develop 
and deploy the rich descriptive standards of the domain, 
whilst embracing more participative approaches that 

encourage interaction with and the formation of com­
munities of interest.18

The carte blanche statement that users participating 
in the library is “good,” however, is insufficient. Library 
administers must ask, “What is the ultimate goal?” 

In summary, current initiatives in the library world to 
bring the tools of Web 2.0 to the service of Library 2.0 are 
exciting and innovative, and, more to the point, they are 
supportive of the library’s purpose. They may, however, 
incur costs, such as monitoring blogs and wikis, and cre­

Figure 4: Hillsdale Teen Library

Figure 5: Hillsdale Teen Library Flickr site



24   inFoRmation tEcHnoLoGY anD LiBRaRiEs  |  DEcEmBER 200724   inFoRmation tEcHnoLoGY anD LiBRaRiEs  |  DEcEmBER 2007

ating content and corresponding with users that stretch 
already inadequate resources even further.

Ultimately, the value of Library 2.0 concepts requires us 
to answer some important questions: will they be used to 
further knowledge, or will they simply create more work 
for librarians? What does the next version of Library 2.0 
look like? Is its mission the same, and only the tools dif­
ferent? What makes the library different from MySpace—
simply a legacy? Should we incorporate new services into 
the current library offerings? How do we, as facilitators 
of conversations, point the way to the next generation of 
library? It is hoped that some of the concepts in participa­
tory librarianship may answer these questions and help 
further the innovations of the Library 2.0 community.

participatory networks

The authors use the phrase “participatory networking” 
to encompass the concept of using Web 2.0 principles and 
technologies to implement a conversational model within 
a community (a library, a peer group, the general public, 
and so on). Why not simply adopt social networking, 
Web 2.0, or Library 2.0 for that matter? Let us examine 
each term’s limitations:

■ Social networking: Social network sites such as 
MySpace and Facebook have certainly captured public 
attention. They also have proven very popular. In their 
short life spans, these sites have garnered an immense 
audience (MySpace has been ranked one of the top 
destination sites on the Web) and drawn much atten­
tion from the press.19 Some of that attention, however, 
has been very negative. MySpace, for example, has 
been typified as a refuge for pedophiles and online 
predators. Even the television show Saturday Night 
Live has parodied the site for the ease with which 
users can create false personas and engage in risky 
online behaviors.20 To say you are starting a social 
networking site in your library may draw either 
enthusiastic support, vehement opposition (“social 
networking experiment in my library?!”), or simply 
confused looks. Add to the potential negative con­
notations the ambiguity of the term. Is a blog a social 
networking site? Is Flickr? To compound this confu­
sion, the academic domain of social network theory 
predates MySpace by about a decade.

■ Web 2.0: Ambiguity also dogs the Web 2.0 world. 
For some, it is technology (blogs, AJAX, Web ser­
vices, and so on). For others, it is simply a buzzword 
for the current crop of Internet sites that survived 
the burst of the dot­com bubble. In any case, Web 
2.0 certainly implies more than just the inclusion of 
users in systems.

■ Library 2.0: As stated before, the term Library 2.0 is 
a vague term used by some as a goad to the library 

community. Further, this term limits the discussion 
of user­inclusive Web services to the library world. 
While this brief focuses on the library community, it 
also sees the library community as a potential leader 
in a much broader field.

So, ultimately, the authors propose “participatory net­
working” as a positive term and concept that libraries can 
use and promote without the confusion and limitations of 
previous language.

The phrase “participatory network” also has a history 
of prior use that can be built upon. It represents systems 
of exchange and integration and has long been used in 
discussions of policy, art, and government.21 The phrase 
also has been used to describe online communities that 
exchange and integrate information. 

■ Libraries as participatory conversations
So where are we? We started with the abstract statement 
that knowledge is created through conversation. We then 
looked at the current landscape of technologies that can 
facilitate these conversations and showed examples of 
how libraries, other industries, and individuals are using 
these technologies. In this section we combine the larger 
framework with the technologies to see how libraries 
can incorporate participatory networks to further their 
knowledge mission.

participatory librarianship in action

Let us look specifically at how participatory networks can 
be used in the library’s role as facilitator of knowledge 
through conversation. An obvious example is libraries 
hosting blogs and wikis for their communities, creat­
ing virtual meeting spaces for individuals and groups. 
Indeed, these are increasingly useful functions for librar­
ies. They meet a perceived need in the community and 
can generate excitement both within the library and in the 
community. The idea of creating online sites for individu­
als and organizations makes sense for a library, although 
it is not without difficulties (see the section on challenges 
and opportunities). Libraries also could use freely avail­
able (and increasingly easy to implement) open source 
software to create library versions of Wikipedia (with 
or without enhanced editorial processes). Another way 
for libraries to offer these services would be through a 
cooperative or other third­party vendor. Such a service 
easily can be seen as a knowledge management activity 
capturing and providing local expertise while linking this 
expertise to that produced at other libraries.

Another reason for libraries to engage in participatory 
networking is that one library can more easily collaborate 



aRticLE titLE  |  autHoR   25paRticipatoRY nEtWoRks  |  LankEs, siLvERstEin, anD nicHoLson   25

with other libraries in richer dialogues. We currently 
have systems that connect our online catalogs and share 
resources through interlibrary loan. These conduits exist 
and can be used for the transferal of richer data, as has 
been proved through collaborative virtual reference sys­
tems. In our current systems, as in traditional library 
practice, when users are referred to other libraries, they 
are sent out and not brought back. In a participatory 
library setting, libraries would facilitate a conversation 
between the user, the community of the local library, and 
then through the developed conduits, other libraries and 
their communities. The end result would be a seamless 
web of libraries where the user can ignore the intrica­
cies of the library’s organization structure and boundar­
ies, and in which the libraries are using the best local 
resources to meet local needs.

Bringing libraries seamlessly together to participate 
in conversations with a single user has another sig­
nificant advantage: the Library would make it easy for 
users to join the conversation regardless of where they 
are, through the presentation of a single façade. There 
is, for example, only one Google, one Amazon, and one 
Wikipedia. Why should users have to search from among 
thousands of libraries to find the conversations they 
want? Participatory networking will be most effective 
when libraries work together, when the whole is greater 
than its parts. 

We currently see elements of the participatory library 
in the OCLC Open Worldcat project. For example, users 
searching Google may come across a listing provided by 
OCLC. After selecting the entry for the book, the user can 
then jump to his or her own local library’s information 
about the book. Users do not have to know which library 
to visit to find a book near them. Extending this concept 
to conversations, one goal of these participatory networks 
is to make it easier for the user to enter a conversation 
with the Library without having to work to discover their 
own specific entry points.

However, ensuring this effective seamless access to 
the Library will require more than simply adding ele­
ments of participatory networking around the library’s 
edges. Adding services such as blogs and wikis may be 
seen merely as adjunct to current library offerings. As 
with any technological advance, scarce resources must be 
weighed against a desire to incorporate new services. Do 
we expand the collection, improve the Web site, or offer 
blogs to students? A better approach for making these 
kinds of decisions is to look at the needs of the community 
served in context with the commonly accepted, core tasks 
of a library, and see how they can be recast (and enhanced) 
as conversational, or participatory, tools. In point of fact, 
every service, patron, and access point is a starting point 
for a conversation. Let’s start with the catalog.

If the catalog is a conversation, it is decidedly formal 
and, more importantly, one way. Think of today’s catalog 

as the educational equivalent of a college lecture. A for­
mal system is used to serve up a series of presentations on 
a given topic (selected by the user). The presentations are 
rigid in their construction (MARC, AACR2, and so on). 
They follow an abstract model (relevance scores, some­
times alphabetical listings), and provide minimal oppor­
tunities to the receiver of the information to provide 
feedback or input. They provide no constructive means 
for the user to improve or shape the conversation. Even 
recent advances in catalog functions (dynamic, graphical 
visualizations; faceted searching; simple search boxes’ 
links to non­collection resources) do little more than 
make the presentation of information more varied. They 
are still not truly interactive because they do not allow 
user participation; they do not allow for conversation.

To highlight the one­way nature of the catalog, ask 
a simple question: what happens when the user doesn’t 
find something? Do we assume that the information is 
there, but that the user is simply incapable of finding it 
(in which case the catalog presents search tips, refers the 
patron to an expert librarian who is capable, or offers 
more information literacy instruction)? Do we assume 
that the information does not exist (refer the patron to 
interlibrary loan, pass him or her on to a broader search 
engine)? Do we assume that the catalog itself is limited 
(refer the user to online databases, or other finding aids)? 
What if we assume that the catalog is just the current 
place a user is involving in an ongoing conversation 
—what would that look like?

How can such a traditionally rigid system (in concept, 
more than in any one feature set) be made more participa­
tory? What if the user, finding no relevant information 
in the catalog, adds either the information or a place­
holder for someone else to fill in the missing information? 
Possibly the user adds information from his or her exper­
tise. However, assuming that most people go to a catalog 
because they don’t have the information, perhaps the user 
instead begins a process for adding the information. The 
user might ask a question using a virtual reference service; 
at the end of the transaction, the user then has the option 
to add the question, along with the answer and associ­
ated materials, to the catalog. Or perhaps, the user simply 
leaves the query in the catalog for other patrons to answer, 
requesting to be notified when a response is posted. In 
that case, when a new user does a catalog search and runs 
across the question, he or she can provide an answer. That 
answer might be a textual entry (or an image, sound, or 
video), or simply a new query that directs the original 
questioner or new patrons to existing information in the 
catalog (user­created see also entries in the catalog).

The catalog also can associate conversations with any 
data point. For example, a user pulls up the record for a 
book she or he feels might be relevant to an information 
need she or he is having. This process starts a conver­
sation between that user and the library, its users, and 



26   inFoRmation tEcHnoLoGY anD LiBRaRiEs  |  DEcEmBER 200726   inFoRmation tEcHnoLoGY anD LiBRaRiEs  |  DEcEmBER 2007

authors of associated works. The user can see comments 
and ratings associated with this book from not only users 
of this library, but users of other libraries. Also associated 
is a list of related works and the full audio of a lecture 
by the author. The user also might be directed to an in­
person or online book group that is reading that book. 
The point is that the catalog facilitates a conversation as 
opposed to simply presenting what it “knows” about a 
topic and then stepping out of the process. The catalog, 
then, does not simply present information, but instead 
helps users construct knowledge by allowing the user to 
participate in a conversation.

There are other means of improving (and linking) 
systems in a conversational library. Take the implicit link 
between the catalog and circulation. Of course, these 
systems have always been linked in that items found in 
the catalog can be checked out, and checked out items 
have their status reflected in the catalog. But this kind 
of state information is a pretty meager offering. Imagine 
using circulation data to improve the actual functionality 
of the catalog. Take the example of a user who is search­
ing the catalog for fictional books on magic. Currently, 
a relevance score between an item’s metadata and the 
query is computed and then all the items are ranked in 
a retrieval set. This relevance score can be computed in 
many ways, but is usually based on the number of times 
a keyword appears in the record and the placement of 
that keyword in the metadata record (giving preference 
to terms appearing in certain MARC fields, such as titles). 
What is missing is the actual, real­world circulation of 
an item. Wouldn’t it make sense, given such an abstract 
query, to present the user with Harry Potter first (but not 
exclusively)? What if we added circulation data to our 
relevance rankings: how many times this item has been 
checked out? It turns out that using a simple statistic 
is amazingly powerful. It is akin to Google’s page rank 
algorithm that presents sites most linked to higher in 
the results. Also, for those worried that users would be 
flooded with only popular materials, studies show that 
while these algorithms do change the very top ranked 
material, the effect quickly fades so that the user can 
still easily find other materials. Another consideration 
for adjusting a search is to allow the user to tweak the 
algorithms used to retrieve works. In the example above, 
a user could turn off the popularity feature. The user also 
could toggle switches for currency, authority, and other 
facets of relevancy rankings.

The conversational model requires us to rethink the 
catalog as a dynamic system with data of varying levels 
of currency and, frankly, quality, coming into and out of 
the system. In a conversational catalog, there is no reason 
that some data can’t exist in the catalog for limited dura­
tions (from years to seconds). Records of well­groomed 
physical collections may be a core and durable collection 
in the catalog, but that is only one of many types of infor­

mation that could exist in the catalog space. Furthermore, 
even this core data can be annotated and linked to (and 
from) more transient media. So, the user might see a 
review from a blog as part of a catalog record on one day, 
but when she or he pulls the record up again in a few 
days, that review might be absent, the blog writer hav­
ing withdrawn the comment. This is akin to weeding the 
collection; however, it would happen in a more dynamic 
fashion than occurs with the content on library shelves.

The conversational model also can be used in other 
areas of the library. What do we digitize? What do we 
select? What programs do we offer? What do we pre­
serve? The empowered user can participate in answer­
ing all of these questions but does not replace the expert 
librarian; rather, the user contributes additional and 
diverse information and commentary.

In fact, the catalog scenario just proposed already 
assumes that the library catalog does more than store 
metadata. In order for the scenario to work, the catalog 
must store questions, answers, video, audio—in essence 
the catalog must be expanded and integrated with other 
library systems so that a final participatory library system 
can present a coherent view of the Library to patrons. The 
next section lays out a sort of roadmap for these enhance­
ments and mergers. 

Framework for integration of participatory 
librarianship 

As has been noted, participatory networks and libraries 
as conversations are not brand new concepts sprung from 
the head of Zeus. Instead, they are means to integrate past 
and current innovations and create a viable plan forward. 
Figure 6 provides a sort of road map of how the library 
might make the transition from current systems to a truly 
participatory system. It includes current systems, systems 
under development (such as federated searching), and 
new concepts (such as the participatory library). It seeks 
to capture current momentum and push the field forward 
to a larger view instead of getting bogged down in the 
intricacies of any one development activity.

Along the left side of the graph are current library 
systems. While the terminology may differ from library 
to library, nearly every system can be found on today’s 
library Web sites. By showing the systems together, the 
problems of user confusion and library management 
burden become obvious. Users must often navigate these 
systems based on their needs, and often with little help. 
Should they search the catalogs first, or the databases? 
Isn’t the catalog really just another database? Which data­
base do they choose? In our attempts to serve the users 
better by creating a rich set of resources and services, we 
have instead complicated their information­seeking lives. 
As one librarian puts it, “don’t give me one more system 
I, or my patrons, have to deal with.”



aRticLE titLE  |  autHoR   27paRticipatoRY nEtWoRks  |  LankEs, siLvERstEin, anD nicHoLson   27

From the array of systems on the left side, we can see 
that libraries have not been doing themselves any favors 
either. We are maintaining many systems, therefore mak­
ing the calls for yet more systems not only impractical but 
unwise. The answer is to integrate systems, combining 
the best of each while discarding the complexity of the 
whole. The library world is in the midst of doing just that. 
This section seeks to highlight promising developments 
in integrating library systems well beyond the library 
catalog and to highlight not only an ideal endpoint, but 
also how this ideal system is truly participatory.

merging reference and community involvement
The functional area furthest along in the integration of 
participatory librarianship is reference; as reference is 
most readily recognizable as a conversation, this comes 
as no surprise. Over the last decade, reference services 
have gone online and have led to shared reference ser­
vices. More importantly, reference done online creates 
artifacts of reference conversations: electronic files than 
can be cleaned of personal information and placed in a 
knowledge base and used as a resource for other users. 
A new development in reference is the reference blog, in 
which multiple librarians and other users can be part of a 
question­answering community with conversations that 
can live on beyond a single transaction.

Another functional area of libraries that is already 
involved with participatory librarianship is community 
involvement. For decades, public libraries have supported 
local community groups through meeting spaces. Some 
libraries now are hosting Web spaces for local groups. As 
libraries incorporate participatory technologies into their 
offerings, they can create virtual places such as discussion 

forums, wikis, and blogs for these community groups 
to use. If there are standards for these discussion areas, 
then groups from different communities also could easily 
participate in shared boards; this makes sense for groups 
such as Weight Watchers or Alcoholics Anonymous that 
have local branches and national involvement. In an 
academic setting, these groups can be student, faculty, or 
staff organizations or courses. 

In addition to reference and hosted community con­
versations, the library has been actively creating digi­
tal collections of materials (either through digitization, 
leasing service from content providers, or capturing the 
library’s born digital items). Parallel to the digital collec­
tion building of library materials is an active attempt to 
create institutional repositories of faculty papers, teacher 
lesson plans, organizational documentation, and the like. 
These services are participatory systems in which col­
lections come from users’ contributions, and they may 
evolve into digital repositories that include both user­ 
and librarian­created artifacts.

These different conversations can be archived into 
a single repository, and, if properly planned, the refer­
ence conversations can live alongside, and eventually be 
intermingled with, the community conversations, and 
the digital repository (which, after all, though formal, is 
a community conversation) into a community repository. 
Community repositories allow librarians to be more eas­
ily involved in the conversations of the community and 
capture important artifacts of these conversations for 
later use.

merging library metadata into an enhanced catalog
Participatory librarianship can be supported by another 
functional area of the library: collections. Traditionally, 
the collection comprises books, magazines, and other 
information resources paid for by the library. Electronic 
resources, such as databases that are leased instead of 
purchased, make up a large portion of library expen­
ditures. More recently, Web­based resources (external 
feeds and sites) have been selected and added to the 
virtual collection. 

Several kinds of finding aids are used to locate these 
information resources. The catalog and databases both 
contain descriptions of resources and searching interfaces. 
In order to improve access, libraries include records for 
databases within the catalog. Conversely, federated search­
ing tools combine the records from different databases and 
could allow the retrieval of both books and articles by com­
bining records from the traditional catalog and databases 
into one tool. If community­created resources are part of 
the catalog, then these resources also would be findable 
alongside other traditional library resources.

The tools for describing information resources also can 
be participatory. In traditional librarianship, the librarians 
provide metadata that patrons then use to make selections. 

Figure 6: road map of how the library might make the transition 
from current systems to a truly participatory system.



28   inFoRmation tEcHnoLoGY anD LiBRaRiEs  |  DEcEmBER 200728   inFoRmation tEcHnoLoGY anD LiBRaRiEs  |  DEcEmBER 2007

By examining this use data, recommender systems can be 
created to help users locate new materials. In participatory 
networking, patrons will be encouraged to add comments 
about items. If standards are used for these comments, then 
they can be shared among libraries to create larger pools of 
recommendations. As these comments are analyzed, they 
can be combined with usage databases to create stronger 
recommender systems to present patrons with additional 
choices based upon what is being explored.

The end result is an enhanced catalog that allows users 
and libraries to find information regardless of which sys­
tem the information resides in. However, the enhanced 
catalog is still just that, a catalog. It contains surrogates 
of digital information and is managed separately from 
the artifacts themselves. In the case of physical items, 
this may be all the library systems can manage, but in 
the case of digital content, there is one more step that 
needs to be taken. Namely, the artificial barrier between 
catalog (defined as inventory control system) and content 
(housed in the community repository) must come down.

Building the participatory library
At this point in the evolution of distributed systems into 
a truly integrated library system, the participatory library, 
we have two large collections: one of resources, and one 
of information about the resources. The first collection of 
digital content, the community repository, is built by the 
library and its users collaboratively. The second collection, 
the enhanced catalog, includes metadata, both formal and 
user­created (such as ratings, commentary, use data, and 
the like). Both the community repository and the enriched 
catalog are participatory. Yet to realize the dream of a 
seamless system of functionality (seamless to the user and 
the library), these two systems must be merged, allow­
ing users to find resources and, much more importantly, 
conversations. Furthermore, the users must be able to add 
to metadata (such as tags to catalog records) and content 
(such as articles, postings to a wiki, or personal images). 
The result may be conceived of as a single integrated infor­
mation resource, which, for the purposes of this conversa­
tion, is called the participatory library. 

Users may access the participatory library directly 
through the library or as a series of services in Google, 
MySpace, or their own home pages. The point is that the 
access to the library takes place at the point of conversa­
tion, not at the point the user realizes he or she needs 
information from the library.

conversations and preservation

The conversation model highlights the need for preserva­
tion. Aside from simply providing systems that facilitate 
conversation, libraries serve as the vital community 
memory. Conversations construct knowledge, but some­
one must remember what has already been said and 

know how to access that dialog. Scientific conversations, 
for example, are built on previous conversations (theories, 
studies, methods, results, and hypotheses). Capturing 
conversations and playing them back at the right time is 
essential. This might mean the preservation of artifacts 
(maps, transcripts, blueprints, photographs), but also it 
means the increasingly important tasks of capturing the 
digital dialogs. This highlights the need for institutional 
repositories (that will later be integrated seamlessly 
with other library systems, as previously discussed). 
Specifically, Web sites, lectures, courseware, and articles 
must be kept. Further, they must be kept in true conversa­
tional repositories that capture the artifacts (the papers), 
the methods (data, instruments, policy documents), and 
the process (meeting notes, conversations, presentations, 
Web sites, electronic discussions). They must be kept in 
information structures that make them readily available 
as conversations; in other words, users must be able to 
search for materials and reconstruct a conversation in its 
entirety from one fragment.

Being where the conversation is

Imagine the conversations that are going on in your 
local library as you read this. Imagine the physicist 
chatting with the gardener, and the trustee talking with 
the volunteer who is reading the latest best­seller. What 
knowledge can be gleaned from these novel interac­
tions? Can you measure it? Can you enhance it? Can you 
capture it? Can you recall it when it would be precisely 
what a user needs?

Note also that these conversations do not belong 
solely to the library. The library is only part of the con­
versation. Faced with the daunting variety of resources 
available on the Web, many organizations try to become 
the single point of entry into it. Remember that conversa­
tions are varied in their mode, places, and players, and, 
more importantly, that they are intensely personal. This 
means that participants need to have ownership in them, 
and often in their locations as well. This also means that 
the library, as facilitator, needs to be varied in its modes 
and access points. In many cases, it is better to either 
create a personal space in which users may converse, or, 
increasingly, to be part of someone else’s space. 

What we can learn from Web 2.0’s mashups is that 
smaller sets of limited (but easy to access) functionalities 
lead to greater incorporation of tools into people’s lives. 
In the ChicagoCrime–Google Maps mashup, combining 
maps from Google and Chicago crime statistics, it was 
important for the host of the site to brand the space and 
shape the interface for his conversation on crime. Can 
your library functions be as easily incorporated into these 
types of conversations? Can a user search your catalog 
and present the results on his or her Web site? The point is 
that libraries need to be proactive in a new way. Instead of 



aRticLE titLE  |  autHoR   29paRticipatoRY nEtWoRks  |  LankEs, siLvERstEin, anD nicHoLson   29

the mantra, “Be where the user is,” we need to, “Be where 
the conversation is.” It is not enough to be at the users’ 
desktops; you need to be in their e­mail program, in their 
MySpace pages, in their instant messaging lists, and in 
their RSS feed readers. 

All of these examples point to a significant mental 
shift that librarians will need to make in moving from 
delivering information from a centralized location to 
delivering information in a decentralized manner where 
the conversations of users are taking place. The catalog 
example presented earlier is an example of a centralized 
place for conversations. What if, instead of only being in a 
catalog, the same data were split into smaller components 
and embedded in the user’s browser and e­mail pro­
grams? Just as Google’s mail system embeds advertising 
based upon the content of a message, the Library could 
provide links to its resources based upon what a user is 
working on. By disaggregating the information within its 
system, the Library can deliver just what is needed to a 
user, provide connections into mashups, and live in the 
space of the user instead of forcing the user to come to the 
space of the library.

challenges and opportunities

There is clearly a host of challenges in incorporating par­
ticipatory networks and a participatory model into the 
library. This is to be expected when we are dealing with 
something as fundamental as knowledge and as personal 
as conversations. We consider four major challenges that 
must be met by libraries before they can truly get into the 
business of participatory librarianship.

technical
There is a rich suite of participatory networking software 
that libraries can incorporate into their daily operations. 
Implementing a blog, a wiki, or RSS feeds these days is 
not a hard task, and they can easily be used to deliver 
information about library services and conversations to 
the user’s space. Furthermore, these systems are often 
tested in very large­scale environments and are, in some 
cases, the same tools used in large participatory network­
ing sites such as Wikipedia and Blogger. Some of these 
packages are commercial, but others are open source 
software. Open source software is cheaper, easier to 
adapt, and, in some cases, more advanced. The downside 
to open source is that it requires a considerable amount 
of technical knowledge by the library (but not as much 
as one might think) and does not come with a technical 
support hotline. 

The largest technological impediment, however, may 
be the currently installed base of software within librar­
ies. Integrated library systems have a long history and 
include a broad range of library functions. Legacy code 
and near monolithic systems have restricted the easy 

exchange of a diverse set of information. Were these sys­
tems written today, they would use modular code and 
loosely coupled APIs and allow customers much more 
interface customizability. These changes may come to 
integrated library systems (as customers are demanding 
it), but it may take years. 

Several libraries are currently attempting to pick apart 
these integrated systems themselves. Often, libraries go to 
the underlying databases that hold the library metadata 
or create their own data structures, such as the University 
of Pennsylvania Data Farm project.22 Once components 
of this system are exposed, the catalog simply becomes 
another database that can be federated into new and uni­
fied interfaces. However, such integration requires a great 
deal of technological expertise. There is an opportunity 
for integrated library system vendors or large consortial 
groups such as OCLC to move quickly into this space.

In the meantime, there is an opportunity for the 
larger library community. This technology brief was 
created in response to a perceived need. Whether evi­
denced in the Library 2.0 community or in conversations 
at LITA, libraries are now interested in incorporating 
new Web technologies into their offerings and opera­
tions. The technologies under consideration here pres­
ent platforms for experimentation. Rather than setting 
up thousands of separated experiments, however, the 
library community should create a participatory net­
work of its own. The technology certainly exists to create 
a test bed for libraries to set up various combinations 
of communication technologies (blogs, tagging, wikis), 
to test new Web services against pooled data (catalog 
data, metadata repositories, and large scale data sets), 
and even to incorporate new services into the current 
library offerings (RSS feeds, for example). By combining 
resources (money, time, expertise) in a single, large­scale 
test bed, libraries not only can get greater impact for the 
their investments, but can directly experience life as a 
connected conversation. These connections, if built at the 
ground level, will then make it easier for the Library to 
come into existence. Terminology can be clarified, claims 
tested, and best practices collaboratively developed, 
greatly accelerating innovation and dissemination.

operational
In addition to being in the conversation business, librar­
ies are in the infrastructure business. One of the most 
powerful aspects of a library is its ability not only to 
develop a collection of some type of information, but 
to maintain it over time. Sometimes infrastructure can 
be problematic (as in the case of legacy systems), but 
more often than not it provides a stable foundation from 
which to operate. 

There are many conversations going on that need 
infrastructure but have none (or little). Think of the 
opportunities in your community for using the Web to 



30   inFoRmation tEcHnoLoGY anD LiBRaRiEs  |  DEcEmBER 200730   inFoRmation tEcHnoLoGY anD LiBRaRiEs  |  DEcEmBER 2007

facilitate a conversation. It might be a researcher want­
ing to disseminate the results of his or her latest study. 
It might be a community organization seeking funding. 
It might be a business trying to manage its basic opera­
tional knowledge. The point is that such individuals and 
community organizations are not in the infrastructure 
business and could use a partner who is. Imagine a local 
organization coming to the library and, within a few min­
utes, setting up a Web site with an RSS feed, a blog, and 
bulletin boards. The library facilitates, but does not own, 
that individual’s or organization’s conversation. It does 
form a strong partnership, however, that can be leveraged 
into resources and support. The true power of participa­
tory networking in libraries is not to give every librarian 
a blog; it is in giving every community member a blog 
(and making the librarian a part of the community). In 
addition, the library can play the role of connecting these 
conversations to other users when appropriate.

Participatory libraries allow the concept of com­
munity center (intellectual center, service center, media 
center, information center, meeting center) to be extended 
to the Web. Many public libraries have no problem 
providing meeting space to local non­profits. Why not 
provide Web meeting space in the form of a Web site or 
Web conferencing? Many academic libraries attempt to 
capture the scholarly output of their faculties, why not 
help generate the output with research data stores? The 
answers to these questions inevitably come back to time 
and money. However, there is nothing in this brief that 
says such services have to be free. In fact, the best part­
nerships are formed when all partners are invested in the 
process. The true problem is that libraries have no idea of 
how to charge for such services. Faculty would be glad to 
write library support into grants (in the form of Web site 
creation and hosting), but need a dollar figure to include 
and how long each task will take. Many libraries aren’t 
used to positioning their services on a per item basis, and 
this makes it difficult to build partnerships. Sometimes it 
is not a lack of money, but a lack of structure to take in 
money that is the problem.

policy
As always, it is policy that presents the greatest challenges. 
The idea of opening the library functions to a greater set of 
inputs is rife with potential pitfalls. How can libraries use 
the technologies and concepts of Facebook and MySpace 
without being plagued by their problems? How can users 
truly be made part of the collection without the library 
being liable for all of their actions? The answers may lie in 
a seemingly obscure concept: identity management.

Conversations can range in their mode, topic, and 
duration. They also can vary in the conversants. The 
library needs to know a conversant’s status to determine 
policy (for example, we can only disclose this information 
to this person), and requires a unique identifier, such as 

a library card, to uphold it. In traditional libraries, that is 
the extent of identity management.

In a participatory model, distinctions among identi­
ties become complex and graduated, and require us to 
consider a new approach. This new model, of patrons 
adding information directly to library systems, is not as 
radical as it may first appear. We have become very used 
to the idea of roles and tiered levels of authority in many 
other settings. Most modern computer systems allow for 
some gradation in user abilities (and responsibilities). 
Online communities have even introduced merit systems, 
by which continual high­quality contributions to a site 
equals greater power in the site. Think about Amazon, 
Wikipedia, even eBay; as users contribute more to the 
community, they gain status and recognition. From par­
ticipants to editors, from readers to writers, these organi­
zations have seen membership as a sliding scale of trust, 
and libraries need to adopt this approach in all of their 
basic systems. We currently do, to a degree, in the form 
of librarians, paraprofessionals, and other staff. Yet even 
these distinctions tend to be rigid and often class­based, 
with high walls (such as a master’s degree) between the 
strata. Some of this is imposed by outside organizations 
(civil service requirements, tenure track, and so on), but a 
great deal is there by inertia of the field. 

Skillful use of identity management will help librar­
ies avoid the baggage of MySpace and Facebook. As 
users grain greater access, greater responsibility, and 
greater autonomy, libraries need to be more certain of 
their identities. That is, for a user to do more requires 
the library to know more. Knowing about a user may 
involve traditional identity verification or tracking an 
activity trail, whereby intentions can be judged in rela­
tion to actions. These concepts may be expressed as, “The 
more we know you, the more control you can have in 
valuable services such as blogging, or the catalog.” The 
concepts are illustrated in Blogger and LiveJournal, both 
of which require some level of identity information. In 
another example, to join LiveJournal you must be invited, 
thus the community confers identity. The common theme 
is that verifying (and building) identity is community­
based. The difference between the library and MySpace is 
that the library works in an established community with 
traditional norms of identity, whereas MySpace is seeking 
to create a community (where identity is more defined by 
social connections than actions). Both the library and the 
services mentioned above, however, base their functions 
and services on identity. 

Ethical
As knowledge is developed through conversation, and 
libraries facilitate this process, libraries have a powerful 
impact on the knowledge generated. Can librarians inter­
fere with and shape conversations? Absolutely. Should 
we? We can’t help it. Our collections, our reference work, 



aRticLE titLE  |  autHoR   31paRticipatoRY nEtWoRks  |  LankEs, siLvERstEin, anD nicHoLson   31

our mere presence will influence conversations. The ques­
tion is, in what ways? By dedicating a library mission to 
directly align with the needs of a finite community, we 
are accepting the biases, norms, and priorities of the com­
munity. While a library may seek to expand or change the 
community, it does so from within. 

When Internet filtering became a requirement for fed­
eral Internet funding, public and school libraries could not 
simply quit, or ignore the fact, because they are agents of 
their communities. School libraries had to accept filtering 
with federal funding because their parent organizations, 
the schools, accepted filtering.23 We see, from this example, 
that libraries may shift from facilitating conversations to 
becoming active conversants, but they are always doing 
both. Thus, the question is not whether the library shapes 
conversations, but which ones, and how actively?

These questions are hardly new to the underlying 
principles of librarianship. And nothing in the participa­
tory model seeks to change those underlying principles. 
The participatory model does, however, highlight the fact 
that those principles shape conversations and have an 
impact on the community. 

■ Recommendations
The overall recommendation of this article is that librar­
ies must be active participants in the ongoing conversa­
tions about participatory networking. They must do so 
through action, by modeling appropriate and innovative 
use of technologies. This must be done at the core of the 
library, not on the periphery. Rather than just adding 
blogs and photosharing, libraries should adopt the princi­
ples of participation in existing core library technologies, 
such as the catalog. Anything less simply adds stress and 
stretches scarce resources even further.

To complement this broad recommendation, the 
authors make two specific proposals: expand and deepen 
the discussion and understanding of participatory net­
works and participatory librarianship, and create a par­
ticipatory library test bed to give librarians needed 
participatory skills and sustain a standing research 
agenda in participatory librarianship.

As stated in the outset of this document, what you are 
reading is limited. While it certainly contains the kernel 
and essence of participatory networks (systems to allow 
users to be truly part of services) and participatory librar­
ianship (the role of librarianship as facilitators and actors 
in conversations in general), the focus was on technology 
and technology changes. Already, the ideas contained in 
this document have been part of an active conversation. 
The first draft of this document was made available for 
public comment via a wiki, e­mail, and bulletin boards, 
and concepts herein presented at conferences and lec­

tures. However, there is now a need to broaden the scope 
and scale of the conversation. The theoretical founda­
tions of participatory librarianship need to be rigorously 
presented. The nontechnical components of the ideas 
(and the marriage of nontechnical to technical) need to 
be explored. There are curricular implications: How do 
we prepare participatory librarians? The nature and form 
of the Library and participatory systems need to be dis­
cussed and examined in theoretical, experimental, and 
operational contexts.

In order to do this, the authors propose a series of con­
versations to engage the ideas. These conversations, both 
in person and virtual, need to be within the profession and 
across disciplines and industries. The deeper conversa­
tions need to be documented in a series of publications that 
expand this document for academics and practitioners.

The authors feel, however, that the first proposal must 
be grounded in action. To complement the more abstract 
exploration of participatory networks and participatory 
librarianship, there must be an active playground where 
conversants can experience firsthand the technologies 
discussed, and then actively shape the tools of partici­
pation. This is the test bed. This test bed would imple­
ment a participatory network of libraries, and provide 
a common technology platform to host blogs, wikis, 
discussion boards, RSS aggregators, and the like. These 
shared technologies would be used to experiment with 
new technologies and to provide real services to librar­
ies. Thus, libraries could not only read about blogging 
applications, they could try them and even roll them out 
to their community members. As libraries start new com­
munity initiatives, they could rapidly add wikis and RSS 
feeds hosted at the shared test bed. The test bed would 
also make all software available to the libraries so they 
could locally implement technologies that have proven 
themselves. The test bed would provide the open source 
software and consulting support to implement features 
locally. The test bed also would develop new metrics and 
means of evaluating participatory library services for the 
use of planners and policy makers.

A major deliverable of the test bed, however, would 
be to model innovations in integrated library systems 
(ILS). The test bed would work with libraries and ILS 
vendors to pilot new technologies and specify new stan­
dards to accelerate ILS modernization. The point of the 
test bed is not to create new ILSs, but to make it easy 
to incorporate innovative technologies into vendor and 
open source ILSs.

The location and support model of the test bed are 
open for the library community to determine. Certainly, 
it could be placed in existing library associations or orga­
nizations. However, it would require the host to be seen 
as neutral in ILS issues, and to be capable of supporting 
a diverse infrastructure over time. The host organiza­
tion also would need to be a nimble organization, able 



32   inFoRmation tEcHnoLoGY anD LiBRaRiEs  |  DEcEmBER 200732   inFoRmation tEcHnoLoGY anD LiBRaRiEs  |  DEcEmBER 2007

to identify new technical opportunities and implement 
them quickly.

One model that might work is establishing a pooled 
fund from interested libraries. This pooled fund would 
support an open source technology infrastructure and 
a small team of researchers and developers. The team’s 
activities would be overseen by an advisory panel drawn 
from contributing members. Such a model spreads this 
investment out into experimentation across a broad col­
laboration and should, ultimately, save libraries time 
and money. As a result, the time and money that indi­
vidual libraries might spend on isolated or disconnected  
experiments can be invested in a common effort with 
greater return.

Libraries have a chance not only to improve service to 
their local communities, but to advance the field of par­
ticipatory networks. With their principles, dedication to 
service, and unique knowledge of infrastructure, libraries 
are poised not simply to respond to new technologies, 
but to drive them. By tying technological implementa­
tion, development, and improvement to the mission of 
facilitating conversations across fields, libraries can gain 
invaluable visibility and resources.

Impact and leadership, however, come from a firm 
and conceptual understanding of libraries’ roles in their 
communities. The assertion that libraries are an indis­
pensable part of knowledge generation in all sectors pro­
vides a powerful argument to an expanded function of 
libraries. Eventually, blogs, wikis, RSS, and AJAX all will 
fade in the continuously dynamic Internet environment. 
However, the concept of participatory networks and con­
versations is durable.

■ Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the following people and 
groups: Ken Lavender, for his editing prowess. The doctoral 
students of IST 800 for providing input on conversation 
theory: Johanna Birkland, John D’Ignazio, Keisuke Inoue, 
Jonathan Jackson, Todd Marshall, Jeffrey Owens, Katie 
Parker, David Pimentel, Michael Scialdone, Jaime Snyder, 
Sarah Webb. The students of IST 676 for their tremendous 
input and for their exploration of the related concept of 
Massive Scale Librarianship: Marcia Alden, Charles Bush, 
Janet Chemotti, Janet Feathers, Gabrielle Gosselin, Ana 
Guimaraes, Colleen Halpin, Katie Hayduke, Agnes Imecs, 
Jennifer Kilbury, Min­Chun Ku, Todd McCall, Virginia 
Payne, Joseph Ryan, Jean Van Doren, Susan Yoo. Those 
who commented on the draft, including Karen Scheider, 
Walt Crawford and John Buschman, and Kathleen de la 
Peña McCook. LITA for giving us a forum for feedback. 
Carrie Lowe, Rick Weingarten, and Mark Bard of ALA’s 
OITP for their feedback and support. The Institute staff, 

including Lisa Pawlewicz, Joan Laskowski, and Christian 
O’Brien, for logistical support.

References and Notes

 1. Cited in P. Hardiker and M. Baker, “Towards Social 
Theory for Social Work,” Handbook of Theory for Practice Teachers 
in Social Work, J. Lishman, ed. (London: Jessica Kingsley, 1991).
 2. G. Pask, Conversation Theory: Applications in Education and 
Epistemology (New York: Elsevier, 1976).
 3. Linda H. Bertland, “An Overview of Research in Metacog­
nition: Implications for Information Skills Instruction,” School 
Library Media Quarterly 15 (Winter 1986): 96–99.
 4. Pask, Conversation Theory, 92.
 5. Tim O’Reilly, “What Is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and 
Business Models for the Next Generation of Software,” O’Reilly, 
www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/
what­is­web­20.html (accessed Feb. 1, 2007).
 6. J. Suroweicki, The Wisdom of Crowds (New York: Double­
day, 2004).
 7. “Wiki’s Wild World: Researchers Should Read Wikipedia 
Cautiously and Amend It Enthusiastically,” Nature 438, no. 
890 (Dec. 2005): 890; www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/
n7070/full/438890a.html (accessed Feb 1, 2007).
 8. Google, “Google Maps API,” www.google.com/apis/
maps (accessed Feb. 1, 2007).
 9. “Java Script Tutorial,” W3 Schools, www.w3schools.com/
js/default.asp (accessed Feb. 1, 2007).
 10. While the terms in Web 2.0 are a bit ambiguous, many 
people confuse the term “mashup” with “remixes.” Mashups 
are combining data and functions (such as mapping), whereas 
remixes are reusing and combining content only. So combining a 
song with a piece of video to create a “new” music video would 
be a remix. Mapping all of your videos on a map using YouTube 
to store the videos and Google Maps to plot them geographically 
would be a mashup.
 11. For example Gmail, a very widely used, Web­based email 
service, but is still considered “beta” by Google. 
 12. Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things 
Can Make a Big Difference (Boston: Back Bay Books, 2000), 272.
 13. OCLC, “Introduction to Dewey Decimal Classification,” 
www.oclc.org/dewey/versions/ddc22print/intro.pdf (accessed 
Feb. 1, 2007).
 14. “Ajax (programming),” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia 
.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming) (accessed Feb. 1, 2007).
 15. “Web Services Activity,” W3C, www.w3.org/2002/ws 
(accessed Feb. 1, 2007).
 16. Walt Crawford, “Library 2.0 and ‘Library 2.0.’ ” Cites & 
Insights 6, no. 2 (2006), http://citesandinsights.info/civ6i2.pdf 
(accessed Dec. 13, 2007).
 17. Eric Ormsby, “The Battle of the Book: The Research 
Library Today,” The New Criterion (Oct. 2001): 8.
 18. Ken Chad and Paul Miller, “Do Libraries Matter? The 
Rise of Library 2.0: A White Paper,” version 1.0, 2005, www.talis 
.com/downloads/white_papers/DoLibrariesMatter.pdf 
(accessed Feb. 1, 2007).
 19. Slashdot, “MySpace #1 US Destination Last Week,”  
h t t p : / / s l a s h d o t . o rg / a r t i c l e s / 0 6 / 0 7 / 1 2 / 0 0 1 6 2 11 . s h t m l  



aRticLE titLE  |  autHoR   33paRticipatoRY nEtWoRks  |  LankEs, siLvERstEin, anD nicHoLson   33

(accessed Feb. 1, 2007); Pete Williams, “MySpace, Facebook 
Attract Online Predators,” MSNBC, www.msnbc.msn.com/
id/11165576 (accessed Feb. 1, 2007); “The MySpace Gener­
ation,” BusinessWeek, Dec. 12, 2005, www.businessweek 
.com/magazine/content/05_50/b3963001.htm (accessed Feb. 
1, 2007).
 20. Saturday Night Live, “Sketch: MySpace Seminar,” NBC, 
www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/segments/9166.shtml 
(accessed Feb. 1, 2007).

 21. C. Stohl and G. Cheney, “Participatory Processes/Para­
doxical Practices,” Management Communication Quarterly 14, no. 
3 (2001): 349–407.
 22. J. Zucca, “Traces in the Clickstream: Early Work on a 
Management Information Repository at the University  of Penn­
sylvania,” Information Technology and Libraries 22, no. 4 (2003): 
175–78.
 23. To be more precise, public and school libraries that accept 
e­Rate funding.