Week 6 # 15 Library 2.0 & Fish

I have been having a trying week. A couple of weeks back my husband & I added some small tetras (gold & neon) to our freshwater tank. Since then we have had about half of our tank of fish die. They have no discernable illness, no parasites, mucus, etc etc. visible. They do not behave strangely. One minute they are eating & swimming, the next they are floating. The deaths have been across a wide spectrum of fish. We have lost all 6 of our threadfins, but not all at once, over two weeks. We have lost 1 of 3 red wag platties, 2 blue moons, a silver mollie, a balloon mollie, a female & male guppy (2 males & 1 female remain), and of the tetras, 1 gold & 2 neons have survived. We have also discovered 3 baby somethings in the tank that remain unaffected. Cherry barbs, a Chinese algae eater & panda corys among a few others remain unaffected. This is a real puzzler. We have changed the water and both our tests & those at the pet store say the water is perfect. The temps are also OK. We are just hoping that whatever it is will stop of its own accord because we cannot find any cause for this. I have searched Google, de.licio.us and all over the web to see if I could find any info, but you have to have symptoms in order to determine a cause. If anybody out there has any ideas, I'd appreciate comments.
Now on to Library 2.0. I really enjoyed reading the "Away from the Icebergs" article. I thought his points on "just in case" collections, expecting users to educate themselves, and expecting users to come to us were valid. Libraries have to move with the times or we will lose to other sources of information & community. In "Into A New World of Librarianship" I thought the author's comments on not implementing technology for its own sake, but only when it was making an improvement was well thought out. Each library system should have a plan, and if a new technology has no value it should not be implemented just for the sake of it. In "A Ripple Effect" a small rural school library shows how it expanded its services. Some of the services offered were innovative and I could see them being implemented in our system (HCPL). Why not loan MP3 players with a downloadable books program? (Need money first!) I thought a lot of what they were doing we already do but there is always something someone is doing differently. I read all the OCLC Space Newsletter articles. They were all of interest. I see how much databases will become linked in the future. There will be no limit to access to knowledge and you will be able to download a book in French from a French company, as easily as downloading from American ones. You will be able to access documents or articles from Russia as easily as from Spain or from the U.S. There is so much potential here and we are still only at the beginning. Library 2.0 is about how we view the future of libraries and our place in the world, not just in our own town or community. It is about access to information, but also about community. There is an article in Library Journal April 15, 2007 about Laura Cohen's blog, "Library 2.0: An Academic's Perspective", where she gives insight on dealing with the chaos of change using Library 2.0. Read her Manifesto at this address.
http://liblogs.albany.edu/library20/2006/11/a_librarians_20_manifesto.html
There is also another article in the same edition of Library Journal called "Journey to Library 2.0" by Robin Hastings, that refers to the 23 Things and Helene Blowers.