WISER: Technology Tools Getting Organised on the Web Jane Rawson, Vere Harmsworth Library Emma Cragg, Sainsbury Library

Web 2.0 Web 2.0 is a term being used to describe a new generation of internet sites and services which encourage participation and collaboration between user communities.

What’s in it for me? Sites/tools that can help you to: Organise yourself on the web Discover new content and bring the web to you Share research and interesting content with others No technical know-how needed and it’s almost all free!

Tools to look at today Social bookmarking Social cataloguing delicious, StumbleUpon etc Social cataloguing My WorldCat, LibraryThing RSS feeds and readers Google Reader, Bloglines Customised start pages iGoogle, Pageflakes, NetVibes

Social bookmarking Create personal lists of web links Add comments or information Share web links with others Accessible from anywhere Add tags to classify/filter your list View other people’s lists and discover new sites

Social bookmarking sites http://delicious.com http://www.connotea.org http://www.simpy.com http://www.stumbleupon.com http://digg.com http://reddit.com http://www.diigo.com http://www.google.com/bookmarks

Delicious One of the first and most basic sites, pioneered tagging Oxford examples: Vere Harmsworth Library: http://delicious.com/vhllib History Faculty Library: http://delicious.com/HFLOxford Bodleian Law Library: http://delicious.com/lawbod Education Library: http://delicious.com/EDLIBOxford Language Centre Library: http://delicious.com/LanguageLibOxford Sainsbury Library: http://delicious.com/SainsburyLibrary Nuffield College Library: http://delicious.com/NuffieldCollegeLibrary Philosophy Library: http://delicious.com/Oxford_Philosophy_Library Zoology Library: http://delicious.com/zoolib

Posting Network – view other people’s links Use tags to filter Saved by others Notes and tags

Discovering with Delicious Search by keyword Search by tag http://delicious.com/tag/[??] Subscribe to feeds by user or by tag Share your links

Social cataloguing Make personal lists of books, add notes and tags and share View other people’s lists/libraries View ‘social data’ – other people’s tags, reviews, ratings, recommendations

Web version of OCLC’s WorldCat, with web 2.0 features Create personal reading lists with space for notes, RSS feeds Share with others Export as citations Add social data to WorldCat records http://www.worldcat.org

Search Save to personal lists Export to EndNote/ RefWorks Save to delicious etc Add/browse by tags Add/read reviews

Feeds Save to delicious etc Create and export as bibliography Add notes

Like a WorldCat of personal libraries Catalogue your personal library and show it off with widgets Add and view social data– LT social data is much more comprehensive than My WorldCat Get recommendations Join groups to discuss http://www.librarything.com

Add books See who else owns it Filter with tags

Search Link through to other sites/ebooks/catalogues View other people’s libraries Read reviews Browse by tags Get recommendations

LibraryThing bells & whistles

RSS feeds RSS = Really Simple Syndication Subscribe to updates from a variety of electronic resources Keep up to date Don’t miss out Save time There a two ways of finding information on the web the old way; have a list of websites you visit regularly to check for new content - time consuming - liable to miss new content if you’re too busy to check back or away the new way; set up RSS feeds to your favourite sites - every time new content is added it is sent to you - does not rely on you remembering or having time to check - saves content until you have time to read it

RSS feed readers Organise feeds using folders and tags Share single items, entire feeds or bundles of feeds http://www.google.com/reader/ http://www.bloglines.com/ To read RSS feeds you need a feed reader The best readers are web based e.g. Google Reader and Bloglines. There are versions that you can download and run on your computer but your feeds are then tied to that machine. The benefit of web based readers is that you can access your feeds on any machine wherever you are. Using a feed reader to manage your feeds you can Organise your feeds using folders and tags e.g. if you have a set of work related feeds you can group these together in a folder and keep them separate from your personal feeds Highlight useful items e.g. there might be an interesting post you want to return to later to read in more detail Share useful or interesting items, feeds or bundles of feeds with friends and colleagues

Organise subscriptions Add subscriptions This is an example of RSS feeds displayed in Google Reader The main section on the right is showing all recent updates from feeds that I have grouped in to a folder called “Libraries”. Any unread items are marked in bold. The section at the bottom of the left hand sidebar shows all my subscriptions and the groups they belong to. 1. To add a subscription all you need to do is paste the URL from your source in this box and then click add. Alternatively you can enter the name of the source e.g. the financial times and Google will return a list of feeds matching your search. Then you simply pick the feed you want from the list. Organise subscriptions

Star items Share items Here I have highlighted some of the key features that I mentioned earlier Using the starred items feature you can flag interesting, useful or important items that you wish to return to. It is a similar process to bookmarking a website. To share items with friends and colleagues you can post items to your public page (automatically created when you sign up). Then you just share the link to that page with anyone you’d like to share the information with. A new feature added just a couple of weeks ago is the ability to share groups of feeds e.g. if you have a few feeds on a specific topic that you want to share with colleagues. This is done through the “Browse for stuff” link.

Sources Look for the RSS icon News sites e.g. Google News, BBC Databases e.g. Business Source Complete Blogs e.g. Financial Times, TechCrunch Social bookmarking sites e.g. del.icio.us Where are RSS feeds available from? Basically anywhere you see the RSS icones. RSS feeds are now commonplace – it’s rare that you will find a site that doesn’t offer some kind of feed. Listed are some examples of the kind of sites which offer RSS feeds News sites; get headlines, sports news, science news etc. Databases; create RSS feeds of your searched and receive updates of newly published articles meeting your specified criteria Blogs; where RSS feeds began And as Jane mentioned earlier you can also get feeds from social bookmarking sites either for individual users or tags

Start pages Redesign the web to suit your needs Create a launch pad for your research http://www.google.com/ig http://www.pageflakes.com/ http://www.netvibes.com/ I’m now going to move on and talk about start pages. This topic follows on nicely from RSS feeds as the two share a similar principle – brining information from across the web into one place. Start pages allow you to redesign the web to suit your needs; you can bring together tools and information from across the to create your own site. Examples of start pages are iGoogle, Pageflakes and Netvibes. I’m going to show you iGoogle; I have variously experimented with others but this is the one I keep coming back to; I find that it’s the cleanest and simplest to use.

Features Bookmarks Email RSS feeds Search tools To do lists External widgets; social networking, IM Before I get to iGoogle, here’s a quick list of some of the main tools you can add to your start page: Bookmarks – allows you to access your bookmarks from any computer Email – you can link to any web based email account through your start page instead of opening it in another tab RSS feeds – most start pages come with an inbuild feed reader Search tools – you can embed search boxes from a variety of sites e.g. Google or Yahoo!, or library catalogues e.g. British Library or WorldCat To-do lists – there’s no longer a need to keep a paper to-do External widgets – link to your accounts on a number of different sites e.g. Facebook and Twitter

Add gadgets to your homepage Here on my iGoogle page you can see some of the features I’ve just mentioned. On the right I’ve got a news feed, in the centre a gadget that links to my Google Reader account and on the left there is a to-do list and some bookmarks. It couldn’t be simpler to add content to your start page. Begin by clicking the “Add stuff” link in the top right corner (highlighted by red box)

Add individual RSS feeds Return to homepage Search for gadgets Add to your homepage The will take you to this page where you can browse or search for content to add to your page By clicking the “Add it now” button you can send the gadget straight to your page. If you click on the hyperlinked name you will get more information about the gadget. To add an RSS feed directly to your site you can click the “Add feed or gadget” link at arrow 2. To find a gadget for a specific purpose you can enter a search term in the text box at arrow 3, e.g. British Library catalogue Add individual RSS feeds

RSS feeds and news Here are some examples or RSS and news feeds that you can add to your site: On the left is a Google News gadget. It displays headlines and news on topics that you can specify. So you see I have chosen to have Top Stories, World and UK news, Business and Science and Tech. On the right is a Google Reader gadget displaying RSS feeds that I have subscribed to and organised into a folder called “Libraries”. In the centre are some more RSS feeds; at the top is a feed from Business Source Complete of a search I ran for the keyword “entrepreneurship” in the journal MIT Sloan Management Review. Whenever a new article is published that meets this criteria it will appear here. At the bottom is an RSS feed for the delicious tag “web2.0”

Web tools Here are some examples of web tools you can add to your start page: On the top left is a Gmail widget which links to my email account and displays my inbox Underneath that is a list of bookmarks Top right is my to-do list ordered by priority – there are other to-do list gadgets where you can set a due date for each item Underneath that is a British Library search box

Conclusion: Benefits Information comes to you Save time Content not restricted to one computer Customisable Share information Collective wisdom This list of benefits relates to all of the tools Jane and I have talked about today Using one or all of these tools you can: Get the most out of the web by making the information come to you Save time by letting the tools do the work for you; all you need to do is highlight areas of interest Become less reliant on one machine; with these web based tools everything moves with you Customise the web to suit your needs Share and collaborate

Conclusion Organise yourself on the web Save your bookmarks, create reading lists and bibliographies, rationalise your reading, build your own web portal Discover new content and bring the web to you Use the ‘wisdom of crowds’ to filter the best of the web, subscribe to updates Share research and interesting content with others Get back what you put in, make recommendations, work collaboratively In conclusion today we have shown you just some of the tools available that can help you to Organise yourself on the web Discover new content Bring information on the web to you Share new discoveries and ideas with others We’ve given you some examples of sites which offer these services but there are many more out there. Have a play around and find the one that suits you best.