# 17 & 18 - All things 2.0-ti-ful

This is cheating to an extent but I'm rolling the last 2 bits up into a single post...

So, Library 2.0 - in the end, the term is derivative from Web 2.0, which itself is pretty much about leveraging the power of networks for mass collaboration and conversation, be it direct (eg commenting on a blog, contributing to a wiki) or indirect (the aggregation of 'intentional' data such as Amazon's 'people who bought this also bought...' or tagging more generally - ie the basis behind the remark that the defining feature of a web 2.0 application is that it functions better the more people use it) - and particularly focussing on the web as a platform for facillitating these network effects.

Web 2.0 has been translated into Library 2.0 in a number of ways:
- how do we use Web 2.0 technologies in an incremental way to improve the way we do what we've always done
- how might we use Web 2.0 concepts about conversation and co-creation to re-think the library/user hierarchy
- let's use whatever cool technology we can lay our hands on (er, no)
- how do we become more user-centric (well yes, but to a large extent this question has been asked for the past 30-40 years, which is one of the reasons some commentators tend to think that all this Library 2.0 stuff is just old wine in new bottles)
- how do we use network technologies to get our content and services out "in the flow" of the user environment like never before, ie so that users encounter us in their preferred digital environment - accessing our journal articles through Google scholar, finding our special collections through Wikipedia, plugging our digital reference services into Facebook - the possibilities are enormous, if we are prepared to give up a bit more control over the way people use our content than we have been in the past).

What does it mean for SLV? Well, I'm sure many of these principles will show up in the new website, but there's plenty to think about just within AID - new approaches to online reference services, resource guides, online learning programs, internal knowledge management activities to name just a few things that have crossed my desk this week.

And what of the Learning 2.0 program? I've had a bit of fun even though I'd been using all these sites previously - the great thing from my perspective is that there is increasingly a collective understanding of web 2.0 tools and how they might be used, and I can see people incorporating this understanding into their work already - and as we press forward with various new initiatives it provides a better basis for AID staff not only to remake some of our existing services and content, but also to be more involved in other slv21 or web projects across the organisation.

#16 - Podcasts

<pedantry>

OK, it's 5.37pm at the tired end of a grumpy kind of day, so I'm going to let loose my inner pedant and confess to being the Web 2.0 equivalent of an apostrophe nazi when it comes to the use of the term "podcast". Though the definition seems to have shifted to mean "any audio file put on the internet" (which is pretty much as the cited New Oxford American Dictionary would have it), these have been around for years - the whole point of podcasting was that it was the audio equivalent of RSS and that you subscribed to a podcast and got notified when a new program was available. So a podcast is really a channel, not a program. Or was, common usage now having seemed to change it.

So I'm not really sure why SLV puts up single files as "podcasts"
- why would you want to subscribe to a channel that was never going to show another program?

</pedantry>

Over the past 2 years I have become an expert at subscribing to Radio National programs, downloading them to my iPod, and discovering that I still don't have either the time or the inclination to listen to the radio...

#15 - YouTube

I've found myself on YouTube more and more during the election campaign. At a time where image trumps substance in the political environment there's no better way for the citizenry to talk back, and no better antidote to pretense, hypocrisy and condescension than a bit of DIY video satire. The Kevin Rudd Chinese Propaganda video is still my favorite from the campaign:

#14 - Web 2.0 awards list

Very briefly -

Meebo - it's not quite there yet, despite the fact that it's popping up on library sites all over the place - but it definitely demonstrates part of the future of online reference services, namely a widget that you can stick on any web page for direct online communications with a relevant librarian. No need for a one size fits all service, could use it for example on different resources guides providing a link to the relevant subject librarian. They just need to sort out some mechanism of queuing inquiries :-) In the longer term (when Kevin07 makes good on his broadband promise... ) we might even get to widget based VOIP or teleconferencing and leave chat behind as a transitional medium...

Speaking of resource guides, Squidoo is worth a look to get some ideas about how we might redo some of our own in the Web 2.0 world - see for example this one on Library 2.0. Another nice development on this front is LibGuides - a paid rather than free service but worth checking out for ideas.

#13 - Blog about Technology

Bizarre hype (and critique) this week in the blogosphere for the release of Amazon's ebook reader, Kindle. I can't see any reason why this is likely to be any more successful than all the failed ebook readers of the past - not because it's hard to read in the bath (who really does this?) but because:
- it's chock full of digital rights management crud that locks it in to the Amazon website and prevents easy management and sharing of files in other formats
- it's a single function device that's betwixt and between the myriad and converging forms of handheld devices on the one hand, and lightweight laptops on the other - if ebooks are really going to take off I can't see why it wouldn't be on software that runs on a laptop with a better digital display...
- it costs US$399 (if I recall correctly) - hardly an incentive to explore - if they worked on the razor principle (ie give away the razor to sell future blades) and sold it for twenty bucks, a lot of people might try them out and get to like them, but at that price, no way...

I guess you could argue that Apple's strategy for the iPod wasn't a whole lot different, but on the one hand a lot of people can see the value in toting around 1000 songs in a tiny device, but why you'd need 1000 books with you on the train is a bit less compelling, and let's face it the iPod is a brilliant piece of design and the Kindle is not.

My prediction - in a decade the only place you'll be able to find one of these is in the Dead Media Museum.

#12 - Web Based Applications

Have been using Google Documents for quite a while now, though playing around with Zoho Writer I prefer the latter. However Google Docs sits neatly as a widget on my personalised Google homepage so I guess the convenience factor means I wouldn't switch unless I was really using it in a serious way rather than basic text docs which I might need either at home or at work. The Zoho upload function worked better than expected, didn't even corrupt any tables in a more complex document so I might even recommend it ahead of Google Docs to students who ask about access to Word so that they can edit/print their essays/resumes.

Only a matter of time before web based applications (SAAS, or software as a service) become standard and we end up renting online Microsoft Office for a few bucks a year if we don't want to use one of the less fully featured and free applications...

#11 - Flickr mashups

Hmm, maybe it's because because I'm more a text based than a visual kind of guy, maybe I'm just having an unimaginative or grumpy day, but this is the point where I go "huh?". Couldn't really find anything of interest, basically a lot of ways to edit or display photos in predefined ways. Just playing around with Photoshop is a lot more fun, and OK, that's expensive software but it's not going to be long before there's some reasonably powerful free image editing software available directly via the web - though interesting that Google's image app, Picasa, is still a download rather than genuine web based software.

Kane's Bridge

This is a test post using the Flickr "Blog This" function.

#10 Flickr

Being only an occasional photographer and quite content to keep these on my own PC I have never been a big user of Flickr - though it's occasionally useful for work purposes, eg checking out the good, the bad and the ugly of library signage. Having just played around with it a bit though, the Blog This function is a really good example of web applications playing nicely with each other.

I love what the National Library is doing with Flickr as a way of sourcing new items for the pictures collection - though the flipside is that I'm never terribly impressed with getting a whole stack of Flickr results in a Pictures Australia search, would have thought that this would just be restricted to the photos acquired rather than the whole Flickr group. Also nice to see NLA getting some of their own photographic collections out into Flickr, though I wonder how many people use Flickr as a starting point for searching for images compared with, say, Google - would it give these items more exposure to load the metadata into Google and link back to Picture Australia or individual library sites? The problem with Flickr is that you've actually got to upload the pictures as well... So even though it's a great idea to get our digital collections 'in the flow' of most users' web environments I'm not sure that adding copies of digital images to Flickr is likely to be a very cost effective technique...

#9 - Technorati and LibraryThing

I find Technorati useful for the occasional search, but don't find much value in a lot of the extra features. There are quite a lot of blog or news sites (or even search engines like A9) that allow you to set up saved searches/watchlists and then subscribe to them as HTML feeds, which should be great in theory, except that I've always found it difficult to craft a search at the appropriately specific level - single term searches generally just deluge you with useless results, and the functionality just isn't there to craft lengthy but discriminating Boolean searches. In the past I've ended up setting up multiple saved searches around phrases, can't remember if Technorati is one that supports phrase searching - but in the end I abandoned them all - too much to monitor already without this kind of (relatively indiscrimate) vacuuming of the blogosphere...

Here's a tag, for what it's worth: watchlist

The "popular" section is interesting - just goes to show that despite the claims that blogging and RSS are now mainstream, well, getting there maybe - but the top 9 blogs are all for geeks - not that I'm trying to be insulting as I'm one eighth geek on my mother's side (and already subscribe to 2 of the top 10 rated blogs). As for claiming my blog, this function seems to be down at the moment, another day maybe. Bottom line, I can't really see myself using Technorati for anything more than the occasional search that I currently do.

LibraryThing is another matter, this is a great site that I look at regularly, however I have to confess that I am a LibraryThing parasite - I love using it for personal 'readers advisory' purposes, but catalogue my books on it? Who's got the time? I don't get it really, but I'm glad lots of other people do. At the end of the day I'd rather be reading books than cataloguing them...

#8 Tagging & Del.icio.us

Del.icio.us is one of those sites I've used a lot but never set up an account for, having always been happy enough with browser based bookmarking systems and also probably in the past a bit nervous about putting all that valuable stuff up on a website that could just disappear one day without warning. But hey, PCs die too, I guess increasingly we're being asked to trust the network with our data - I just like to make sure anything I use like this has a good export function. Anyway, the import of bookmarks from Firefox was a doddle, I've fiddled around a bit but I'm still happy enough to keep using browser bookmarks, especially since I use the Google browser sync application to keep work and home bookmarks on the same page...

As for tagging, it has its place, which is basically when users can tag their own items (eg del.icio.us, Library Thing, Flickr), but I don't know of any particularly successful applications of the concept to get people to tag other stuff - not even Amazon, with its giant user base. So using Library Thing tags in the catalogue as YPRL has done is a nice touch (though Lynette - why are the tags under Item Information and the LCSH headings under Catalogue Record - is it not possible to combine all this info on one page?), but I am extremely sceptical about the value of just allowing users to tag library catalogue records, not because they'll write rude words but simply because they won't do it enough to really add much value, as like most Web 2.0 technologies, the value of tagging increases the more people do it.