Theme: Social technologies

Using ‘amateur technologies’ as a synonym for social technologies corresponds to Andrew Keen´s book The Cult of the Amateur: How today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture. Professional writers, journalists, researchers and lecturers share the virtual space with happy enthusiasts acting as news reporters and self-made wiki-experts, writing blogs that irritatingly tend to pop up at the top of search results. Actually, in a recent interview Keen says that he has modified his view on the social technologies, as more and more professional writers contribute to web magazines and write blogs really worth reading.

When library professionals start looking at ways of using social technologies in their work, they aim at expanding and diversifying library services, at making services more attractive for today’s users. Blog-writing librarians mirror current professional discourse, profiling their profession anew. Tagging is added as a nice complement, not as a tool for orientation in a universe of knowledge and literary experiences. Librarians participating in wiki-activities aim at adjusting facts and correcting misinformation.

"We go to great lengths to confuse you about what is real and what is not", is a quotation from an advertisement for some new virtual game. In the library, the intention should be quite the opposite.

Barbro Wigell-Ryynänen
editor-in-chief

Translation: Turun Täyskäännös