Overview of content related to 'twitter'

Motivations for the Development of a Web Resource Synchronisation Framework

lisrw — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 15:58:46 +0000

Stuart Lewis, Richard Jones and Simeon Warner explain some of the motivations behind the development of the ResourceSync Framework.

This article describes the motivations behind the development of the ResourceSync Framework. The Framework addresses the need to synchronise resources between Web sites. Resources cover a wide spectrum of types, such as metadata, digital objects, Web pages, or data files. There are many scenarios in which the ability to perform some form of synchronisation is required. Examples include aggregators such as Europeana that want to harvest and aggregate collections of resources, or preservation services that wish to archive Web sites as they change.

Seb Schmoller Replies

lisrw — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 12:27:42 +0000

Stepping down from his pivotal role as CEO at ALT, Seb Schmoller kindly answers a few questions from Ariadne on his perspective on online learning.

Ariadne: Seb, please tell us a little about yourself.

Case Studies in Web Sustainability

lisrw — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 15:09:03 +0000

Scott Turner describes issues around making Web resources sustainable.

At the moment organisations often make significant investments in producing Web-based material, often funded through public money, for example from JISC. But what happens when some of those organisations are closed or there is no longer any money or resources to host the site? We are seeing cuts in funding or changes in governmental policy, which is resulting in the closure of some of these organisations.

CURATEcamp iPres 2012

lisrw — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 12:21:18 +0000

Mark Jordan, Courtney Mumma, Nick Ruest and the participants of CURATEcamp iPres 2012 report on this unconference for digital curation practitioners and researchers, held on 2 October 2012 in Toronto.

CURATEcamp is ‘A series of unconference-style events focused on connecting practitioners and technologists interested in digital curation.’ [1] The first CURATEcamp was held in the summer of 2010, and there have been just over 10 Camps since then.

IFLA World Library and Information Congress 2012

lisrw — Tue, 11 Dec 2012 13:16:31 +0000

Marieke Guy reports on the 78th IFLA General Conference and Assembly held in Helsinki, Finland over 11-17 August 2012.

The Sunday newcomers session chaired by Buhle Mbambo-Thata provided us with some insight into the sheer magnitude of IFLA (as most people seem to call it) or the World Library and Information Congress (to give the formal name) [1]. This year’s congress had over 4,200 delegates from 120 different countries, though over a thousand of these were Finnish librarians making the most of the locality of this year’s event.

International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL) 2012

lisrw — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 13:44:54 +0000

Anna Mastora and Sarantos Kapidakis report on TPDL 2012 held at Paphos, Cyprus, over 23-27 September 2012.

The 16^th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries (TPDL) 2012 [1] was another successful event in the series of ECDL/TPDL conferences which has been the leading European scientific forum on digital libraries for 15 years. Across these years, the conference has brought together researchers, developers, content providers and users in the field of digital libraries by addressing issues in the area where theoretical and applied research meet, such as digital library models, architectures, functionality, users, and quality.

Online Information 2012

lisrw — Sun, 16 Dec 2012 17:10:56 +0000

Marieke Guy reports on the largest gathering of information professionals in Europe.

Online Information [1] is an interesting conference as it brings together information professionals from both the public and the private sector. The opportunity to share experiences from these differing perspectives doesn’t happen that often and brings real benefits, such as highly productive networking. This year’s Online Information, held between 20 - 21 November, felt like a slightly different event to previous years.

Enhancing Collaboration and Interaction in a Post-graduate Research Programme

lisrw — Sat, 28 Jul 2012 08:39:58 +0000

Tertia Coetsee describes a community of practice for post-graduate students where RefShare is deployed for digital storage and retrieval, alongside Blackboard for the purposes of communication. She also describes the role of the information specialist in the programme.

The Phytomedicine Programme is a multidisciplinary and collaborative research programme investigating therapeutically useful compounds present in plants growing in South Africa. The programme was started in 1995 and was transferred to the Department of Paraclinical Sciences, Faculty of Veterinary Science, University of Pretoria in 2002. In 2007 it was designated as a National Research Foundation Developed Research Niche Area [1].

Making the Most of a Conference

lisrw — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 15:05:33 +0000

Stephanie Taylor writes about how she made the most of a conference to promote and inform the work of a project.

I’ve been working with repositories in various ways for over five years, so I have, of course, attended the major international conference Open Repositories before. I have never actually presented anything or represented a specific project at the event, though. This year was different. This year I had a mission - to present a poster on the DataFlow Project [1] and to talk to people about the work we had been doing for the past 12 months and (I hoped) to interest them in using the Open Source (OS) systems we had developed during that period.

Eduserv Symposium 2012: Big Data, Big Deal?

lisrw — Mon, 30 Jul 2012 17:48:45 +0000

Marieke Guy attended the annual Eduserv Symposium on 10 May 2012 at the Royal College of Physicians, London to find out what are the implications of big data for Higher Education Institutions.

The annual Eduserv Symposium [1] was billed as a ‘must-attend event for IT professionals in Higher Education’; the choice of topical subject matter being one of the biggest crowd-drawers (the other being the amazing venue: the Royal College of Physicians). The past few years have seen coverage of highly topical areas such as virtualisation and the cloud, the mobile university and access management.

The Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW) 2012

lisrw — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 12:54:44 +0000

Kirsty Pitkin reports on the 16th Institutional Web Management Workshop held at the University of Edinburgh's Appleton Tower between 18 - 20 July 2012.

The 16th Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW 12) took place at the University of Edinburgh's Appleton Tower – a building with a stunning panoramic view over the volcanic city. The event brought together 172 delegates and attracted an additional 165 viewers to the live video stream of the plenary sessions over the three days.

Book Review: Mob Rule Learning

lisrw — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 12:15:59 +0000

Fiona MacLellan reviews a book which discusses the current unconference phenomenon and highlights the learning opportunities that these environments offer.

The unconference phenomenon is something that I have heard lots about and have previously tried to read information about; however what this basic research has never been able to do is convince me of the necessity for the unconference or camp environment. Michelle Boule in this concise and easy-to-read book has managed to go at least part way to achieving this. Through use of case study, interview and example, the book provides an overview of the history of the unconference alongside the benefits it may represent to individuals and organisations. Boule illustrates the bene

Book Review: I, Digital – A History Devoid of the Personal?

lisrw — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 18:17:27 +0000

Chris Rusbridge reviews an edited volume that aims to fill a gap in ‘literature designed specifically to guide archivists’ thinking about personal digital materials’.

We are all too familiar with the dire predictions of coming Digital Dark Ages, when All Shall be Lost because of the fragility of our digital files and the transience of the formats. We forget, of course, that loss was always the norm. The wonderful documents in papyrus, parchment and paper that we so admire and wonder at, are the few lucky survivors of their times. Sometimes they have been carefully nurtured, sometimes they have been accidentally preserved. But almost all were lost!

Collaborations Workshop 2012: Software, Sharing and Collaboration in Oxford

lisrw — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:57:05 +0000

Simon Choppin reports on a two-day software workshop held at The Queen’s College, Oxford over 21 - 22 March 2012.

On the 21 and 22 March 2012 I attended a workshop which was unlike the stolid conferences I was used to. In the space of two sunny days I found I had spoken to more people and learnt more about them than I usually managed in an entire week. Presentations were short and focused, discussions were varied and fascinating, and the relaxed, open format was very effective in bringing people from differing disciplines together to consider a common theme. In this case the theme was software, and whether you used or developed it, there was plenty of food for thought.

Has Second Life Lived up to Expectations?

lisrw — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 14:06:59 +0000

Paul Gorman examines to what degree Second Life has justified the claims made for it by its evangelists with particular regard to education.

Second Life (SL) is a virtual world created and owned by a company called Linden Lab and was launched in 2003. By 2006, SL was increasingly visible in the UK media and by 2007 SL had secured over 600 mentions in UK newspapers and magazines [1]. However, media interest in SL evaporated rapidly with references to it dropping by more than 40% in 2008 and even further since. During this peak period SL attracted large investment in virtual land from multi-national corporations, businesses and also attracted significant interest from educational institutions.

Welsh Libraries and Social Media: A Survey

lisrw — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 14:06:59 +0000

Alyson Tyler outlines the results of a survey of Welsh libraries, their access to, and use of, social media, and offers a sample business case.

Librarians are, in general, often quick to pick up and experiment with new technologies, integrating them into their work to improve the library service. Social media are no exception. This article seeks to show how the adoption of social media by different library sectors in Wales is helping to deliver and promote their library services.

Editorial Introduction to Issue 68

lisrw — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 15:17:06 +0000

The editor introduces readers to the content of Ariadne issue 68.

I am pleased to introduce you to the content of Issue 68, and to have the opportunity to remind you that you have a far larger number of channels into the publication’s content.

The Future of the Past of the Web

lisrw — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 12:06:52 +0000

Matthew Brack reports on the one-day international workshop 'The Future of the Past of the Web' held at the British Library Conference Centre, London on 7 October, 2011.

We have all heard at least some of the extraordinary statistics that attempt to capture the sheer size and ephemeral nature of the Web. According to the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), more than 70 new domains are registered and more than 500,000 documents are added to the Web every minute [1]. This scale, coupled with its ever-evolving use, present significant challenges to those concerned with preserving both the content and context of the Web.

The Third Annual edUi Conference 2011

lisrw — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 22:26:07 +0000

Danielle Cooley reports on the third annual edUi Conference, held over 13-14 October 2011, in Richmond, Virginia, USA, an opportunity for Web professionals in colleges, universities, libraries, museums, etc to discuss the latest developments in Web trends and technologies.

The third annual edUi Conference [1] was held October 13-14, 2011, in Richmond, Virginia, USA. The sold-out event saw 225 ‘Web professionals serving colleges, universities, libraries, museums, and beyond’ join together to discuss the latest and greatest in Web trends and technologies. The all-volunteer conference was presented by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, and major sponsors included Microsoft, the University of Richmond, and Virginia Commonwealth University.

The two-day event consisted of four tracks [2]:

IMPACT Final Conference 2011

lisrw — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 13:36:33 +0000

Marieke Guy reports on the two-day conference looking at the results of the IMPACT Project in making digitisation and OCR better, faster and cheaper.

The IMPACT Project (Improving Access to Text) [1] was funded by the European Commission back in 2007 to look at significantly advancing access to historical text using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) methods. As the project reaches its conclusion, one of its key objectives is sharing project outputs.

Book Review: The Future of Archives and Recordkeeping

lisrw — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:50:08 +0000

John Azzolini reviews an anthology of perceptive essays on the challenges presented to archival thought and practice by Web 2.0, postmodern perspectives, and cross-disciplinary interchanges.

Librarians, archivists, and records managers do not share identical challenges or controversies in their practical endeavours or theoretical queries. However, a common issue for all the information professions and a dominating topic of discussion in their literature is the fundamental change in the structure and distribution of knowledge caused by mass digitisation. The proliferation of daily digital content, in quantity, reach, and manifestation, is confronting them all with a disquieting role ambiguity. The expanding tools and expectations of Web 2.0 have made this self-questioning a recurrent one, but they have also stimulated invigorating debate on the purpose and direction of these fields. The perception is one of extraordinary change initiated by emerging technologies, unprecedented knowledge production and dissemination, and a new centralised role for the information user. In these galvanising changes leading library and archives practitioners are sensing opportunities for confirming the professions’ relevance, in the estimation of other scholarly disciplines and of society at large, but, perhaps most of all, in their own eyes as well.

Editorial Introduction to Issue 67: Changes Afoot

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Richard Waller introduces Ariadne issue 67.

For readers who might have been wondering, I shall resist Mark Twain's remark about reports of his demise being exaggerated, and reassure you that while Ariadne has been undergoing changes to the way in which it will be delivered to the Web, it has been business as usual in the matter of the content, as you will see from the paragraphs that follow. Issue 67, while currently not looking any different, is in the process of being migrated to a new platform developed to enhance functionality and give a more user-friendly look and feel to the publication.

Connecting Researchers at the University of Bath

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Jez Cope and Geraldine Jones describe a recent series of events introducing social media to research students at the University of Bath.

The Connected Researcher initiative is a response to both local and sector-wide events. At the University of Bath groups of postgraduate research students from Chemistry and Social Sciences separately expressed an interest in finding out how to profile their own research and establish links with other researchers in their fields.

Looking for the Link Between Library Usage and Student Attainment

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Graham Stone, Bryony Ramsden and Dave Pattern introduce the JISC-funded Library Impact Data Project (LIDP).

UK Reading Experience Database

editor — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:00:00 +0000

Bethan Ruddock reports from the launch event for the UK Reading Experience Database, held at the Betty Boothroyd Library, the Open University, Milton Keynes, on 24 February 2011.

I was invited down to the Open University (OU) Betty Boothroyd Library in Milton Keynes for the launch of the UK Reading Experience Database (UK RED) [1]. I had been asked to attend to talk about the LOCAH Project and Linked Data, but I was also looking forward to learning about the RED Project.

This was the first of two launch days, and was designed for librarians, archivists, and information managers. A second launch day for teachers in Higher Education was to be held in London the next day.

What Is UK RED?

The tagline for UK RED is 'the experience of reading in Britain from 1450 to 1945', and the database brings together reading experiences, making them both searchable and browsable. What is a reading experience? It is evidence of anyone alive between the mid-15th and 20thcenturies having read and interacted with a book or other piece of writing, such as magazines, newspapers, letters - even playbills and advertisements. Ownership alone is not enough; there must be something to show that the person in question actually read the work or at least part of it.

This information can be found in a number of places - a printed book review would be an obvious example. The RED team also find many entries in diaries. Such entries can range from simple lists of books that someone has read over the course of a year, to detailed descriptions of when and where they read a particular book, and how they felt about it. Often diary entries are not actually about the book; it is mentioned in passing and in the context of a number of other activities.

While the owner's name on the flyleaf is not itself enough to justify a 'reading experience', annotations to the text are, as they show that the person has actually interacted with the text. Of course, you then have to consider whether the person whose name is on the flyleaf is the same as the person doing the annotating!

RED is much more than a list of 'people who have read books'. The database aims to bring out as much information as possible about the reading experience. The interface to submit a new entry allows you to specify where the reading was taking place, all the way down to a particular room in a particular house. It also aims to identify if the reading was silent or aloud, alone or with other people; whether the book was owned by the reader, a library book, borrowed, or even stolen. All these data are then used to build up a rich database of information on who was reading what (and how!) in Britain.

UK RED is not just concerned with reading experiences within Britain: team members also look at the reading experiences of citizens abroad. Edmund King, Research Associate, Reading Experience Database, OU, told us that, as a consequence, there are fascinating examples of what captured British soldiers were reading in prisoner-of-war (POW) camps as well as examples of what they were not allowed to read. Books in Welsh and Pakistani were banned, as well as atlases and anything about the Russian revolution. I do not know if there are corresponding records for what prisoners in UK POW camps were forbidden to read, but it would be very interesting to find out.

Editorial Introduction to Issue 66: Sanity Check

editor — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Richard Waller introduces Ariadne issue 66.

With institutions searching to increase the impact of the work they do, and conscious of the immediate impact of any event they organise, many will be interested to read of 10 Cheap and Easy Ways to Amplify Your Event in which Marieke Guy provides a raft of suggestions to enhance the participants' experience of and involvement in, the event they are attending.

10 Cheap and Easy Ways to Amplify Your Event

editor — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Marieke Guy describes new tools and services that can help you get your event heard.

In 2007 Lorcan Dempsey coined the phrase 'the amplified conference' [1]. He used the term to refer to how event outputs (such as talks and presentations) were being amplified 'through a variety of network tools and collateral communications'.

Saving the Sounds of the UK in the UK SoundMap

editor — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Maureen Pennock and Chris Clark introduce an innovative initiative from the British Library to map a 12-month soundscape of the UK.

The impact of the digital age upon libraries has been profound, changing not only the back office, services, and the range of materials available to users, but also the public face of libraries and the relationship between the library and its users. Within this changed relationship, collaboration, participation, and online social networks play an increasingly important role in the user experience, especially in large university and national libraries. At the same time, a shift is taking place in the type of collection items held in libraries, and the percentage of born-digital materials acquired is increasing on a daily basis.

The British Library is no exception, making use of a wide range of online services and tools to engage with users and enhance access to the collections, both digitised and born-digital. Numerous initiatives are currently taking place across the Library to engage with users and address these changes, and one in particular has sought to capitalise on both the increase in participatory networks and the opportunities afforded by born-digital material. This initiative is the UK SoundMap, an online crowd-sourcing activity driven by the British Library in partnership with the Noise Futures Network to engage and build the community in development of a new born-digital audio-visual research resource [1][2].

Unlocking and Integrating Audio-Visual Content at the British Library

The UK SoundMap is being carried out as part of a wider project by the British Library's Sound & Vision Department: Unlocking & Integrating Audio Visual Content (UIAVC). The UIAVC project seeks to address changing user needs in a multi-media research environment by establishing the building blocks for a redefined and integrated sound and moving image service within the Library. Other, complementary initiatives in the project include:

Modernising and enhancing interactive features in the existing Archival Sound Recordings (ASR) portal, which currently provides access to over 45,000 selected recordings of music, spoken word, and human and natural environments [3].
Establishing a New Music Network to select and capture content from musicians whose work is produced outside the usual commercial channels
Exploring and piloting new R&D Tools to improve resource discovery through new search and analysis tools for speech and music [4]
Increasing the amount of digital audio and video content accessible to users at the Library (i.e. onsite), and remotely

Overall, the project is key to meeting the Library's audio-visual strategy, which aims to unlock and integrate audio-visual content across the library according to user needs. The initiatives interrelate to a significant degree as they each follow the content path from acquisition to curation to integrated delivery. They each focus on digital content (both born-digital and digitised analogue content), they embrace both onsite and remote (Web) access, and collectively they express the commitment the Library now has towards integrating audio-visual media within the research experience.

International Digital Curation Conference 2010

editor — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Alex Ball reports on the 6th International Digital Curation Conference, held on 7-8 December 2010 in Chicago.

The International Digital Curation Conference has been held annually by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) [1] since 2005, quickly establishing a reputation for high-quality presentations and papers. So much so that, as co-chair Allen Renear explained in his opening remarks, after attending the 2006 Conference in Glasgow [2] delegates from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) offered to bring the event to Chicago.

Beyond the PDF

editor — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Jodi Schneider reports on a three-day workshop about the future of scientific communication, held in San Diego CA, USA, in January 2011.

'Beyond the PDF' brought together around 80 people to the University of California San Diego to discuss scholarly communication, primarily in the sciences. The main topic: How can we apply emergent technologies to improve measurably the way that scholarship is conveyed and comprehended? The group included domain scientists, researchers and software developers, librarians, funders, publishers, journal editors - a mix which organiser Phil Bourne described as 'visionaries, developers, consumers, and conveyors' of scholarship.

Book Review: Blogging and RSS - A Librarian's Guide, 2nd Edition

editor — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Elly Cope reviews the second edition of this book in which the author explains how RSS and blogging can be used by librarians and libraries.

Michael P. Sauers is a trainer in Internet technologies and this book is intended for librarians who have heard of blogging and RSS and want to start using these tools as soon as possible, but who may not have the expertise or confidence in their ability to start by themselves.

Repository Fringe 2010

editor — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Martin Donnelly (and friends) report on the Repository Fringe "unconference" held at the National e-Science Centre in Edinburgh, Scotland, over 2-3 September 2010.

2010 was the third year of Repository Fringe, and slightly more formally organised than its antecedents, with an increased number of discursive presentations and less in the way of organised chaos! The proceedings began on Wednesday 1 September with a one-day, pre-event SHERPA/RoMEO API Workshop [1] run by the Repositories Support Project team.

Survive or Thrive

editor — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Ed Fay reports on a two-day conference organised by UKOLN on behalf of JISC to consider growth and use of digital content on the Web, which was held in Manchester in June 2010.

Survive or Thrive [1] is the punchy title given to an event intended to stimulate serious consideration amongst digital collections practitioners about future directions in our field - opportunities but also potential pitfalls. The event, which focused on content in HE, comes at a time of financial uncertainty when proving value is of increasing importance in the sector and at a point when significant investment has already been made in the UK into content creation, set against a backdrop of increasingly available content on the open Web from a multitude of sources.

Internet Librarian International Conference 2010

editor — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Claire Tylee, Katrin Flemming and Elly Cope report on the two-day Internet Librarian International Conference focusing on innovation and technology in the information profession, held in London on 14-15 October 2010.

Table of Contents

Thursday 14 October
Track A: Looking Ahead to Value

Thursday 14 October

Track A: Looking Ahead to Value

A102: Future of Academic Libraries

Mal Booth, University of Technology Sydney (Australia)

Michael Jubb, Research Information Network (UK)

Mal Booth from the University of Technology Sydney started the session by giving an insight into current plans and projects underway to inform a new library building due to open in 2015 as part of a major redeveloped city campus.

Editorial Introduction to Issue 64: Supporting the Power of Research Data

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Richard Waller introduces Ariadne issue 64.

In these cash-strapped times among all the admonitions to save money here, and resources there, I rather hope to hear much about the necessity of protecting and building the knowledge economy if the UK is to make its way in the globalised world, since we cannot pretend to compete easily in other areas of endeavour. Hence research has to be regarded as one of the aces remaining to us, and thus I hope the importance of gathering, managing and preserving for long-term access research outcomes will be widely appreciated and supported.

Repository Software Comparison: Building Digital Library Infrastructure at LSE

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Ed Fay presents a comparison of repository software that was carried out at LSE in support of digital library infrastructure development.

Public Library 2.0: Culture Change?

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Sarah Hammond explores UK public libraries' growing participation in social media to reach their audiences online, with a focus on blogging.

Beginning in the mid 2000s I began keeping an eye on how libraries have been getting involved with social software - I started this haphazardly just out of interest but then I started to be more systematic when I needed to explore online resources for my organisation, the National Railway Museum. When I left to pursue my MA in Librarianship at the University of Sheffield I took the opportunity to do some serious research into the subject with a focus on UK public libraries as it seemed to me that they were hugely under-represented online.

Trove: Innovation in Access to Information in Australia

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Rose Holley describes a major development in the Australian national digital information infrastructure.

In late 2009 the National Library of Australia released version 1 of Trove [1] to the public. Trove is a free search engine. It searches across a large aggregation of Australian content. The treasure is over 90 million items from over 1000 libraries, museums, archives and other organisations which can be found at the click of a button. Finding information just got easier for many Australians. Exploring a wealth of resources and digital content like never before, including full-text books, journals and newspaper articles, images, music, sound, video, maps, Web sites, diaries, letters, archives, people and organisations has been an exciting adventure for users and the service has been heavily used. Finding and retrieving instantly information in context; interacting with content and social engagement are core features of the service. This article describes Trove features, usage, content building, and its applications for contributors and users in the national context.

Opportunities for Libraries

I see tremendous opportunities for libraries this year because of advances in technology. The changes in technology mean that anyone can create, describe or recommend content, which means that many people and organisations are becoming librarians or libraries in their own way. Librarians should not be threatened or dismayed by this but rather encouraged, since it means that society is retaining its ongoing interest in the creation, organisation and dissemination of content, and we have an integral role to play in these developments. Libraries and librarians are relevant more than ever in this environment because we have vast amounts of data and information to share, a huge amount of information expertise, and an understanding of how technology can assist us in making information more accessible.

We need to have new ideas and re-examine our old ideas to see how technology can help us. What things have we always wanted to do that we couldn't before, like providing a single point of access to all Australian information? Is this still pie in the sky or can we now achieve it? Libraries need to think big. As Charles Leadbeater would say 'Libraries need to think they are leading a mass movement, not just serving a clientele.' [2] Librarians are often thought of as gatekeepers with the emphasis being on closed access, but technology enables gatekeepers to open doors as well as close them and this is the opportunity I see. However many institutions will need to change their strategic thinking from control/shut to free/open before they can make this transition, and take a large dose of courage as well. The American author Harriet Rubin says, 'Freedom is actually a bigger game than power. Power is about what you can control. Freedom is about what you can unleash.' [3] The National Library of Australia already took this step forward in 2008 with the advent of the Australian Newspapers beta service, which opened up the raw text of digitised Australian newspapers to the public for improvement, without moderation on a mass scale [4]. With a long history of collaboration across the Australian cultural heritage sector [5] with regard to digitisation, storage, and service delivery, the National Library of Australia is well placed to take the lead with innovation in access to information.

Some people may say, 'But isn't Google doing that, so why do we still need libraries?' There is no question in my mind that libraries are fundamentally different from Google and other similar services. Libraries are different to Google for these reasons: they commit to provide long-term preservation, curation and access to their content; they have no commercial motives in the provision of information (deemed by various library acts); they aim for universal access to everyone in society; and they are 'free for all'. To summarise: libraries are always and forever. Who can say that of a search engine, or of any commercial organisation, regardless of size?

Intute Reflections at the End of an Era

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Angela Joyce, Linda Kerr, Tim Machin, Paul Meehan and Caroline Williams look back at the history and achievements of Intute, and reflect on lessons learned as the service enters its final year.

23 Things in Public Libraries

editor — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 23:00:00 +0000

Helen Leech describes a collaborative project to increase front-line staff's understanding and use of Web 2.0 in public libraries.

Did you know that:

Of the Generation Y – the generation born in the 1980s and 1990s – 96% are members of a social network
There are some 200 million blogs on the World Wide Web
One in eight couples who married in the USA in 2009 met over the Internet
If Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth largest by population in the world after China, the USA and India

All the statistics emanate from Socialnomics [1]. They are designed to be attention-grabbers, and they will no doubt provoke ferocious debate. However, what is unarguable is that some seismic shifts have taken place on the Internet in the past ten years, and social media and user-generated content now play a huge role in the way many people create and share information and how they communicate with each other.

These changes have crept up on public libraries. Ten years ago, we became Internet experts when the People's Network initiative put 30,000 computers into our buildings. We became used to the new role of teaching people how to use a mouse, what a search engine is, how to create an email account. But when it came to content, we tended to leave that to our customers. Friends Reunited came along, followed by Myspace, Wikipedia, Youtube, Facebook, and we were dimly aware of them as social phenomena, but we did not have much to do with them in our day-to-day work.

Changes in Public Libraries

So what has changed and why do we need to know about them now? The list below is by no means exhaustive but represents some of the main drivers behind changes emerging within public libraries in the UK.

The need to help people get online. As I write, every public library in the UK is being asked to sign up to Race Online [2], the initiative to get 100% of the population clued up by the time the Olympics happens. The reappointed UK Digital Champion Martha Lane Fox launched the Race Online 2012 campaign in March 2010. The initiative reports that more than 600 partners have pledged to help more than 1.7 million new people to get online by the end of 2012. Its rationale is "to build a UK of near-universal web literacy by the time of the Olympics, with access as easy and affordable as water, electricity or gas and skills considered as fundamental as literacy and numeracy: [its] ambition is to get everyone of working-age online by the end of this Parliament." People need to know the key skills for getting around online, and a large part of these skills involves social networking.
Changes in the way people communicate. There is a subtle shift taking place in electronic communication, moving onwards from email towards more collaborative methods: file sharing and cloud computing, social media that include information 'walls,' instant messaging and mobile apps. There is growing evidence that Generation Y and the Millenials – the generations born after the late 1980s – are moving towards very different methods of communication. It is important that library staff understand these technologies, since they are going to become as mainstream as email very shortly.
Communities in Control [3]: you might recognise this as the title of a recent government paper, looking at the need to pass control over political processes to local communities, and how this could be achieved. The principle is being reinforced through the new administration's Big Society initiative [4]. New technologies are allowing people to mobilise in a way that simply has not been possible before, to create and share content, and to become involved in the running of public libraries in radical new ways. It is also worth looking at the International Association for Public Participation's Spectrum of Public Participation [5] which gives some idea of the range of ways in which we need to work with our communities, from providing them with information all the way up to acting as facilitators so that they can manage and run services themselves. It is also worth watching the film Us Now [6], which gives a glimpse of the way that new technologies might affect people's relationships with central government and public services. It highlights the way that social networking applications allow huge numbers of people to collaborate to do previously unthinkable things, like run a bank. If communities can make the day-to-day decisions necessary to run a bank or a second division football club, then it starts to become possible that they could do the same for political processes or delivery of public services. Library staff need to understand this culture of engagement, and to understand the tools that facilitate it.
The economic environment. The next four years, 2010-14, are going to be the hardest public services have seen, and we are going to have to make cost savings everywhere we can. There are clear benefits in collaboration, and the tools that are available for this are improving rapidly. Which is where 23 Things comes in.