Ronán Kennedy; NUI Galway e-merging technologies for education and libraries Setting The Scene -- Web 2.0 & Library 2.0

First things first – what is 2.0?  hints at a new and improved world wide web

It covers a vast range of topics

Some key concepts of Web 2.0  Blogs  RSS – a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated pages e.g blogs, news feeds etc  Mashup - a website or web application that seamlessly combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience e.g. RSS Feeds  The long tail - that a relative handful of weblogs have many links going into them but "the long tail" of millions of weblogs may have only a handful Amazon - "We sold more books today that didn't sell at all yesterday than we sold today of all the books that did sell yesterday”  Wiki - a type of Web site that allows the visitors themselves to easily edit and change available content (collaborative authoring)  Folksonomy - collaboratively generated, open-ended labels that categorise content such as Web pages, online photographs, and Web links. The labels are commonly known as tags and the labeling process is called tagging.

Fundamentals of Web 2.0  The web as platform  Harnessing collective intelligence  No more set software releases – beta beta beta  Rich user experiences  A social phenomenon. "Web 2.0 is made of people” [Michael Platt]  A more organized and categorized content  It’s effective from the human connections and network effects - examples: podcasting, eBay, Wikipedia, del.icio.us, Skype, and Adsense

Tagging – not taxonomy - It’s user controlled

 The development of tag-based folksonomies, delivered through blogs and wikis, sets up a basis for a semantic-web environment.

…… which brings us to Library 2.0

(by Bonaria Biancu)

Library 2.0 came from ….  Michael Casey in LibraryCrunch He identified the need for libraries to adopt a strategy for constant change while promoting a participatory role for library users.

Some Key Principles of Library 2.0  Browser + Web 2.0 Applications + Connectivity = Full-featured OPAC e.g. Primo from Ex Libris  Harness the library user in both design and implementation of services  Library users should be able to craft and modify library provided services e.g like Blogger – templates, options, etc.  Constant change is replacing the older model of upgrade cycles -- Beta is forever -- copy the Google and Flickr models  Adopt ideas and products from peripheral fields into library service models

Library 2.0 and The User  With Library 2.0, library services are frequently evaluated and updated to meet the changing needs of library users.  Library 2.0 also calls for libraries to encourage user participation and feedback in the development and maintaining of library services.  With information and ideas flowing in both directions – from the library to the user and from the user to the library – library services have the ability to evolve and improve on a constant and rapid basis. [wikipedia]

e-merging technologies for education and libraries