A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk Panel Session: Optimising Technology in Libraries Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Bath UKOLN is supported by: The Sceptics View Of New Technologies About This Talk Panel sessions sometimes fail to be interactive and simply give mini-presentations which fail to engage the audience. In this talk Brian Kelly challenges consensus views and invites rebuttals.

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 2 The Areas Areas Of Consensus XHTML RSS and News Feeds Blogs Wikis

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 3 XHTML – Where We Should Be XHTML: Latest version of HTML W3C Recommendation Provides formal grammar which makes reuse easier Use of XHTML Strict encouraged as a migration path to XHTML 2.0 and true happiness XHTML is HTML expressed in an XML format. This promises the advantages of XML through simple changes to the well-used HTML grammar (e.g. tags in lower case, quoted attributes, etc.) XHTML 1.0 will be followed by XHTML 2.0 – a redesigned markup language based on best practices and lessons learnt (and is not backwards compatible) XHTML is HTML expressed in an XML format. This promises the advantages of XML through simple changes to the well-used HTML grammar (e.g. tags in lower case, quoted attributes, etc.) XHTML 1.0 will be followed by XHTML 2.0 – a redesigned markup language based on best practices and lessons learnt (and is not backwards compatible)

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 4 XHTML – Where We Should Be? But: Invalid XML pages should not be processed (unlike HTML where the spec expects browsers to attempt to render them) Most Web pages are still invalid Widespread use of XHTML will result in mostly blank pages in Web browsers! 94% of browsers don’t support XHTML correctly Tweak in XHTML spec which allows for deviations for non-compliant browsers is ambiguous Is it likely that a non-backwards-compatible XHTML 2.0 will ever take off? Conclusions: XHTML is not a standard which should be deployed lightly

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 5 RSS And News Feeds - Cool RSS: A lightweight format for syndication Support provided for free in many Blogs Widely used (e.g. BBC, …)

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 6 RSS And News Feeds – Cool? But: Embedding newsfeeds from 3 rd parties on your Web site allows them to write to your Web site without further checking – this could be dangerous Even if the news is accurate the content could be embarrassing (e.g. THES news of University league table with your University bottom) Which RSS – 0.9, 1.0, 2.0 or Atom? Do we have mature QA for news feeds yet (e.g. invalid characters such as &, © and £ can cause feeds to break)

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 7 Blogs – Too Good To be True Blogs: Allows individuals to publish content easily Often standards based – e.g. RSS feeds Blog companies provide professional looking templates Democratising : Blog community responses to misleading statements in US election The Baghdad Blogger …

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 8 Blogs – Too Good To be True? Blogs: Vanity publishing I don’t want to read about every thing you did today Often not maintained (remember the diary you received as a child?) The potentially valuable stuff may be stored by third parties Will it still be there next year? Who owns it? Organisational memory can be diffused

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 9 Wikis – One To Watch Wikis: The Web as originally envisaged - everyone can author Easy to use Wikipedia is a proven success

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 10 Wikis – One To Watch? Wikis: Can we trust everyone? Dangers of automated Wiki spam: Wikipedia may be able to manage this, but can we? “A colleague has created a page in a Wiki. I disagree with the content, but it’s his page. If he sent it by I would have given my views in my reply” Can we trust the content ? Traditional Web authoring (content author -> Web editor) may lead to bottlenecks but ensures quality Lack of standards for the Wiki markup Too much Wiki software –which is the best?

A centre of expertise in digital information managementwww.ukoln.ac.uk 11 Questions Any questions, comments, disagreements, …?