Reflective participation or reactive defense?

Three out of four sample uses of Library 2.0 recommended by Stephen Abrams involve history, or memory: Western Trails-Wyoming; American Memory; Ancestors in Your Cupboard. The fourth site supports the recent tradition of pleasure. It seems that the ground floor of Library 2.0, as with literature, is the entertainment and enlightenment of the continually expanding "reader". This may be reassuring to alarmists equating new technology or methods of communication with the isolation of individuals and dehumanization of society.

Bly refers to Shera's assertion that Society ultimately shapes the library and Abrams recommends that we use the adult learning tool of relfection.

Society's most elegant tools and skills write our history and understanding of the world. Could it be that Web 2.0 is an adult reflection of a grass roots shift from a system of hierarchy to collaboration, a move toward an expanded collective culture. Library 2.0 then can be reactive, to control or usurp the movement, or it can be reflective, to achieve dynamic and lasting participation.