Web 2'0 the possibilities

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Web 2.0 the possibilities

• Mark Clowes,
• Virtual Learning Centre team
• Information Services

Learning and IT Services
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Web 2.0

• "a perceived second generation of web-based
  communities and hosted services such as
  social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies
  which facilitate collaboration and sharing
  between users"
• (Wikipedia, 14.06.07 http//www.wikipedia.org/)

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Web 2 sites encourage

• collaboration
• participation
• sharing
• feedback
• In other words,
• Web 2.0 the social Web

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John Hubbard - University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Going virtual technology and the future of
academic libraries. Presentation to The Library
Council of Southeastern Wisconsin Annual
Conference. May 17th 2007. http//www.mcfls.org/
librarycouncil/lcacademic.pdf
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Some Web 2.0 applications

• Social networking (Facebook, MySpace)
• Social bookmarking (del-icio-us, Bb scholar)
• Tagging / folksonomies
• Blogging / podcasting / RSS
• Mash-ups
• Wiki-everything
• Virtual worlds (e.g. Second Life)

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Social networking

• We already had personal home pages what we
  couldn't see was the connections with everyone
  else
• Now you can have a page that people actually DO
  look at
• Good as a platform or one-stop-shop for all your
  online activity
• Completely pointless or a valuable networking
  tool? You decide

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Social networking Facebook

• Absolutely huge in HE, and rapidly catching on
  elsewhere.
• Not just a social network a platform for
  developers, which its owner wants to evolve into
  "the social operating system of the Web" (Media
  Guardian, 11/6/07)

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Social bookmarking Del.icio.us

• alternative to Favorites (IE) or Bookmarks
  (Firefox)
• access from any computer
• add tags
• resource discovery reliant on recommendation
  rather than search engine ranking
• opportunity for sharing
• http//del.icio.us/

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Folksonomies and tagging

• A folksonomy is a user generated taxonomy used to
  categorize and retrieve web content such as Web
  pages, photographs and Web links, using
  open-ended labels called tags (Wikipedia,
  14.06.07 http//www.wikipedia.com)
• Advantages
• User-created index terms
• May record other aspects to a page than are
  mentioned in the formal metadata.
• Disadvantages
• "meta-noise" people using idiosyncratic tags
  which are unhelpful to others (e.g. shulibrary)
  is this a problem?
• inconsistent terms web2.0, Web 2.0, Web_2.0,
  etc

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Tagging in Library Catalogue

• Ann Arbor District Library Catalogue
• http//www.aadl.org/catalog
• (See also user book reviews)

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Blogs

• We already published newsletters, print and
  online
• We could already pass on this information in
  e-mails
• So what's new?
• RSS mode of delivery bare bones content
  can be delivered flexibly in lots of different
  forms (to aggregators, in feeds to web pages,
  wherever)
• Right to reply readers can easily post comments
• Tagging to allow readers to browse your
  content, or even (depending on where the blog is
  hosted) to subscribe to feeds of specific tags
• (If the blog is hosted by Blogger, this is the
  syntax you need to use)
• http//blogname.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-
  /labelname

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Podcasting audio blogging
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RSS feeds

• Web content delivered in "bare bones" form
• This makes the information usable in many
  different formats
• Likely to become more mainstream as Google
  Desktop and IE7 incorporate feeds without setting
  up a separate aggregator account
• Mobile devices starting to incorporate RSS
  readers also, for current awareness on the move

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Mash-ups

• "A mashup is a website or application that
  combines content from more than one source into
  an integrated experience" (Wikipedia, 14/6/07)

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Wiki-everything

• Shared documents (Google Docs, PBWiki)
• Work collaboratively
• Invite-only, or open to everyone - your choice
• If open to anyone, e.g. Wikipedia
• Obvious risks of abuse, unreliability...
• Not a good source of health evidence perhaps!
• BUT the community is surprisingly vigilant in
  policing abuse or poor quality unreferenced
  contributions

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Second Life
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Why should we care?

• These are not just something for techies to worry
  about cultural shifts will shape user
  expectations
• Everyone's a librarian now!
• Our profession is under threat and we need to
  redefine our role in the new information society

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What skills can we offer?

• Filtering content (as a trusted network member, a
  blogger and "new influential")
• Train users to identify which sources are most
  reliable
• Educate in appropriate use of Web 2.0 apps

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Challenges (Just a few!)

• Huge amounts of user-generated content to
  navigate and organise (or will Google do that for
  us ??)
• Transient information wiki pages where the
  content changes daily (but older versions may
  still exist on a server somewhere)
• Wholesale intellectual property infringement
• at one extreme, BitTorrent and Limewire
• recycling and mashing up content in the
  blogosphere.
• No quality control (except the "wisdom of crowds"
  principle)
• The long tail managing / providing more "niche"
  information for minority users

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How to be Library 2.0 some first steps

• Embrace the new channels of information
  distribution (especially RSS).
• Set up an aggregator account
• Look for RSS feeds from your favourite websites
  or journals
• Consider starting a blog as a way of making your
  service more transparent (and encouraging user
  feedback)
• Build online communities, or participate in
  existing ones
• Value customers' opinions (as well as those of
  "experts") and consider how to harness this
  information.
• Don't be afraid to experiment and learn from your
  mistakes
• But keep clear service objectives in mind, if you
  expect your customers to be interested

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Don't forget your roots

• "The return cart is one of the most popular
  social tools in the library!"
• (Beth Jefferson, cited in The Shifted Librarian
  blog)

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Contact details

• Mark Clowes,
• Virtual Learning Centre Team,
• Learning IT Services
• Sheffield Hallam University
• m.clowes_at_shu.ac.uk