In the first half of a two-article series, Phil Bradley applies his practical approach to explain what Web 2.0, or Library 2.0, is and how you can use it to work more efficiently and communicate with your users in new, exciting ways.
If you spend very much time at all using the internet you’ve probably come across the term Web 2.0 or possibly even Library 2.0. If you’re wondering what it all means, don’t worry, because you’re not alone. Web 2.0 doesn’t have a definite description; it’s one of those annoying concepts that has yet to be tied down. If you ask Google to define Web 2.0, you get: ‘Web 2.0 is a term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications to end users. Ultimately Web 2.0 services are expected to replace desktop computing applications for many purposes.’ (This definition has been taken from the Wikipedia article on the subject at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0).
An example would help. Consider the calendar function within Outlook, in which you can put in entries to remind you of particular events and so on. The problem is that it resides on the particular computer you’re using. While it is possible to port that data elsewhere (e.g. to a PDA), it’s not the most useful way of keeping a note of what you’re doing when, particularly if you want to make that information available to other people. Web 2.0 calendars reside on a server on the internet and you can easily allow other people to see your calendar. If you’re feeling brave you can also let them add entries themselves, or you could create a calendar for a particular group of people, all of whom can edit, add and delete entries.
Moreover, you could add RSS support to the calendar, so if colleagues are using a news aggregator they will be able to see when information is added to the calendar without having to keep visiting it. While the job is basically still the same (adding entries), the functionality is much improved: Web 2.0 applications allow you to do the same kind of thing that you’re already doing, but share it more quickly, with a much wider group of users or clients.
There are many Web 2.0 applications, they’re becoming more popular and more are being added all the time. There are many ways in which these applications can help library or information services perform more effectively, and indeed add entirely new services for users.
Online calendars
I started with a calendar example, so I’ll expand on that. There are many online calendars available, free of charge (though some of them do have added functionality if you register for a commercial version). There are several good ones: Planzo,1 Trumba,2 and Mosuki,3 for example.
While they are all slightly different, the basic functionality is the same. They are hosted on the site, so you don’t have to worry about downloading anything, or incorporating it into your existing website (other than providing a link to the calendar from your site if you decide to go down this route). You can change the look and feel, you can provide personal/company information, add notebook entries, and make them available in a weblog, for example. You can also set account and privacy settings to limit who is able to view your information.
If you run a busy library, or perhaps if you’re a public library putting on a lot of events, you could use such an application as a central repository that your users could refer to. Rather than having to send out email reminders to people about a particular event, or the fact that you’re closing early on Friday, you can put all of this information into the calendar.
Of course, the drawback is that people do need to remember to look at the calendar now and then, but with an RSS feed (that the hosting company will create for you) if your users or clients are using a news aggregator they will get informed of new entries or events immediately, without further input from you.
This is perfect for a training department, for example; it means that I don’t need to keep coming to the website to check on the status or date of a course, wasting time hunting around for the information, I can get it immediately from the online calendar. If you already use the Outlook calendar, many of these utilities will allow you to import existing data without the need to re-key it all in.
Social bookmarking
Social bookmarking is another Web 2.0 area that has provoked a lot of interest. You probably have a lot of bookmarks saved in your own browser, but what do you do if you are not using that machine, or you’re at home and only have it bookmarked at work? A social bookmarking service means that you can store your bookmarks on a third-party site, and get access to them from any computer or device attached to the internet. Probably the best example of this is the service provided by Del.icio.us,4 although there are many others, such as Digg5 or BuddyMarks.6
All these services are free, you just need to register with them. Most of them will allow you to add a link to your browser links bar, and whenever you find a web page that you want to bookmark simply click on the link and the service will do the rest. Not only that, however, you can often annotate pages with your own notes, or add ‘tags’ to further define the content of the page. As a result, you never need to be without your bookmarks again.
Now, while that is useful enough, you can then share your bookmarks with colleagues or clients. If you work with a number of other colleagues you probably all have your own specialist areas, but may also have to cover their desks if they are away. A social bookmarking system will allow you to store all the useful sites that you have discovered and share them with your co-workers, making it easier for them to track down information.
Project bookmarks
Alternatively, you may be aware that certain people in your organisation are working on a particular project. Simply create a new bookmark section for them (or an entirely new account), and when you find information that you think would interest them you don’t need to worry about emailing them, or hope that you’ll stumble across them at the coffee machine, you can simply drop the newly found website into the bookmark collection and get on.
This could also be useful if you are, for example, dealing with children who are doing project work on say, Roman Britain. Clearly as the information professional it’s not your role to do their work for them, but you want to provide them with a collection of good resources to help them. What better way than pointing them to your stored collection of bookmarks on that particular subject? If you work in a public library, and are running an event on a particular subject, or about a specific author, you could create a set of bookmarks that you make available to people as part of the promotion of that event, allowing them to quickly browse high-quality sites to do some background reading and research themselves.
Create a new search engine
You can actually go one stage further. Instead of simply creating a list of bookmarks, create an entirely new search engine! This is not as difficult or as daunting as it sounds. Probably the best known of the new Web 2.0 resources in this area is one called Rollyo.7 Again, it’s entirely free to use and simply requires registration. The concept is very simple. All you need to do is to identify up to 25 key websites in a particular area, and add them to your Rollyo search engine. You can then either point users to the URL, or cut and paste some HTML on to a page on your website. Users then simply type in what they’re looking for (just as though they were using a regular search engine) and Rollyo will supply results, but only found from those websites you have included in your list.
Again the possibilities for a library or information service are immense. If you work in a school library your job as the professional is to identify authoritative sites. Working in conjunction with the teacher (or indeed some of the students), create as many Rollyo search engines as you need in order to cover the syllabus for different year groups. The children can do their research safe in the knowledge that they are using good-quality sites.
Company information
If you work in a company, you will I’m sure get asked for information about the same subjects over and over, or be asked to identify good sites in different areas. Rollyo search engines again come into play here; you provide the basics quickly and easily and then let your colleagues find the exact data they need themselves. If you are responsible for keeping people up to date with new research in particular areas you could instead use something like Feed Pile,8 which allows you to pull together all the latest news, weblogs or links into one place and make them available to anyone you choose. Moreover, Feed Pile will constantly check the resources you have chosen and new data will be included in the Feed Pile(s) you have created.
Other examples are things such as H2O playlists,9 which allow you to provide a shared list of readings and other content about particular topics. Squidoo10 lets users create ‘lenses’ which are basically links to sites that you feel are appropriate for different subject areas. Once again, the end-user has to do the work of finding exactly what they want, but they can get to work immediately, without having to bother with going to a search engine and creating a search strategy that may not work properly.
Documents and spreadsheets
Other resources allow you to collaborate with colleagues to produce documents or spreadsheets. Writely11 is a collaborative online word processor. If you’re writing a report or an article, you can store it on their system, allow other people access to it, and they can add, edit or delete information as appropriate, all in real time. Moreover, you can also see who has made changes and so work more effectively. WideWord12 does the same sort of thing.
Of course, once you are at this point you might choose to widen the concept to a larger group. If you’re in a public library, for example, and are running an event on some aspect of local history, you could create a wiki, and allow other people to add pages of content themselves. Wikis are worthy of an article (or indeed book) in themselves but, briefly, it’s a resource that other people can collaborate with you on, creating and editing content, adding new pages of information and so on. People who have their own recollections of a local history event could contribute their thoughts, or indeed add photographs that they took.
Involvement
From being an event that you create and make available, you can encourage the entire community to get involved. Alternatively, if you are working in a commercial environment you could encourage other workers to add pages of information about their specialisms, and share them throughout the entire company. There are many software utilities available, such as PBwiki13 or Seed Wiki.14 Although they may look different, they are all designed for non-technical people to use, with no more knowledge than how to use a basic word processor.
References
1 http://demo.planzo.com/
2 www.trumba.com/
3 http://mosuki.com/
4 http://del.icio.us/
5 www.digg.com/
6 http://buddymarks.com/
7 www.rollyo.com
8 http://feedpile.com/
9 http://h2obeta.law.harvard.edu/home.do
10 www.squidoo.com/
11 www.writely.com/
12 https://wideword.net/
13 http://pbwiki.com/
14 www.seedwiki.com/
Phil Bradley is an internet consultant, trainer, web designer and author. He writes the internet Q&A column for Update, and his book The Advanced Internet Searcher’s Handbook (Facet Publishing) is in its third edition.
In Part 2, Phil will take a look at some other resources that help with outreach. Meanwhile, he has a list of more than 300 such applications on his site (www.philb.com/iwantto.htm), and a companion weblog (http://philbradley.typepad.com/i_want_to/) which will keep you up to date with developments.
Updated: 10 May 2007