Lorcan Dempsey nails it, in my opinion, with his latest weblog entry, Making data work – Web 2.0 and catalogs. Among other things, it pulls together an interesting collection of links in support of his idea that we need to “make data work harder.” All of it resonates with me.

One of his links, O’Reilly’s “What is Web 2.0″, is the first piece I’ve read on “the Web 2.0″ that actually explains in plain text what that phrase might really mean (I’ve read many interpretations). There are two main points of interest to me: 1) that added value (a large part of what libraries do) is only as good as our ability to use it, and 2) that people are as important as ’smarter’ algorithms in going forward with Web development.

On a related note… I recently attended the NISO OpenURL/MXG workshop (I’m still trying to write up a summary… I’ve been a bit under the weather) and was very impressed with what David Walker at Cal State San Marcos has been doing (unfortunately, his web page doesn’t link to what he demoed (yet)). He is a great example of a library programmer working to address the issues raised by Dempsey and others. It is great (and inspiring) to see.