Beginnings...

As predicted, the time taken to decide on a scathingly brilliant name for my blog far exceeded the time allotted for this learning journey this week. Oh, well. And since it is so scathingly brilliant, I probably need to explain it.
The kraken is a Scandinavian sea monster - a bit like a giant squid - which lives at the bottom of the sea. (Image from wikipedia.) Apparently they are very risky - if disturbed, they can grab a warship in one mighty tentacle and drag it to the bottom of the ocean. Unfortunately (though not surprisingly, given that this is a legend...) vast numbers of fish are found in the vicinity of the kraken and Norwegian fishermen would sometimes risk fishing above it in order to bring home an immense haul. When they arrived safely back at the village with their monumental catch, others would say 'Oh, you must have fished on kraken'.
I thought this might be a good metaphor for Libraries 2.0. We have to take a risk in order to succeed. Libraries traditionally 'play it safe'. We don't like to commit to new technologies, new procedures, new policies until they are perfect. Web 2.0 is full of risk. It's experimental. We don't know exactly where it's going or what we might be able to do with it. We might have to relinquish some control over areas which we've usually hung on to - subject headings and theasauri might be combined with user-added tags, policies and procedures might be 'wiki-ed' as clients add suggestions and comments. And don't get me started on copyright!
We can continue plodding safely along, with our traditional client bases and our usual risk-averse methods and polices, or we can 'fish on kraken' - go to where the action is, risk making mistakes, and possibly lose a boat every now and then in order to maximise our client numbers, our relevance and secure our future. I know it's obscure and a bit clumsy, but hey, I bet nobody else has used this metaphor!
So, let's get fishing!