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

2. 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.

3. 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!

4. 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

5. 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

6. Social bookmarking sites

7. Delicious One of the first and most basic sites, pioneered tagging
Oxford examples:
Vere Harmsworth Library:
History Faculty Library:
Bodleian Law Library:
Education Library:
Language Centre Library:
Sainsbury Library:
Nuffield College Library:
Philosophy Library:
Zoology Library:

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

9. Discovering with Delicious
Search by keyword
Search by tag
Subscribe to feeds by user or by tag
Share your links

10. 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

11. 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

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

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

14. 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

15. Add books
See who else owns it
Filter with tags

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

17. LibraryThing bells & whistles

18. 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

19. RSS feed readers Organise feeds using folders and tags
Share single items, entire feeds or bundles of feeds
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

20. 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

21. 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.

22. 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

23. Start pages Redesign the web to suit your needs
Create a launch pad for your research
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.

24. 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
– you can link to any web based 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

25. 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)

26. 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

27. 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”

28. 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 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

29. 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

30. 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.