Teflon Shoulderpad Politics, The Activism Bandwagon and Angry Birds: #libnews digest number 3

This week's stories have led me to think a bit about politics and the nature of our democracy. I think mostly because of the variety of approaches that councils are taking to do with the cuts. As mentioned before, consultations are pretty popular but what constitutes a consultation seems to vary from place to place. Suffolk, for example seems to have grabbed the concept of the Big Society by the horns by making all of it's libraries 'up for grabs' by community groups. I guess that's easier than trying to decide which places deserve a professional library service and which can make do with volunteers... Dorset have taken a different approach by just announcing 20 proposed closures. There seems to be very little consultation and, from what I hear, the cuts appear to have been decided on pretty much on issue stats - with little consideration of the needs of different areas. I'm sad to see Hampshire proposing cuts to their mobile service - with stops closer than 2 miles being axed. If you can walk 2 miles you can read... if not, tough. What's sad is that those who most need them will lose services. Service users will be surveyed apparently but there's little transparency about how the survey will take place. The main publicity for this consultation seems to be web based. Skewed sample anyone?

But I guess what I'm really getting at in this post is confusion. Who's job is it to decide these things? Has politics moved beyond a stage where we can elect officials to represent our interests? There seems to be conflict between different levels of politics, with some elected officials driving cuts whilst others join the protesters. Whilst some MP's defend libraries, so called Government quango's stick the knife in (although I should point out that there is some debate about Roy Clare's actual comments - the link's ironic - The Mail later pulled the story after legal threats). One of my biggest beef's is this disconnect between different levels of politics and I think it partly comes from a lack of strong leadership. Whilst Eric Pickles says that library closures should be a last resort Ed Vaizey seems very reluctant to take any action to stop councils from cutting libraries disproportionately. Some say 'impotent'. I'm a cynic and a Bolshy git at heart so I say 'wilfully negligent'. While Vaizey fiddles the cuts get made... call me paranoid but I think that's all part of the plan. What really annoys me though is when I see headlines asking citizens to come up with ideas to save the day. This is the age of teflon shoulderpad politics where our politicians shirk their responsibilities - if there have to be cuts (and I think that is a big if) I want the decisions on how they are made to be taken by people who are elected to make those decisions because they have some knowledge and skill in the matter - not whoever shouts loudest at a meeting. Yes consult - but there is a difference between consulting and washing your hands of the whole affair.

The Activism Bandwagon

It was a genuine joy to see the #savelibraries tag take over Twitter on Sunday. I think mostly a tag doesn't trend worldwide on Twitter just because of tweeting librarians. OK so Voices for the Library gave it a helping hand but it truly shows that people the world over care about libraries - and from some of the tweets it shows that ordinary folk 'get' what libraries do much more than some of the folks who should know better...

I did chuckle a bit when The Bookseller launched their campaign to save libraries. I guess the folks at Voices for the Library can take the old adage that plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery. But the Bookseller campaign is so similar in it's styling that in this case I'd say plagiarism is the sincerest form of cynical marketing strategy. You have to wonder at the timing as well - the day after such a public display of affection for libraries on Twitter. Just hope it doesn't dilute VftL's efforts.

Finally, for anyone doubting the value libraries add to society - check this one out :-)

Ebooks, Publishers and 21st Century Enclosure

It's funny how seemingly unconnected stuff you read about sometimes converges. I've been reading about enclosure recently (OK mostly on Wikipedia and in the poetry of John Clare but that still counts right?). The word enclosure (in this context) refers to a period of English history where common rights to use land for the purpose of grazing or mowing hay were revoked by the landowners by fencing off, or "enclosing" the land. This was driven by the will of the landowners to use the land as pasture for sheep as there was an international market for English wool. However, sheep farming does not require as much labour as arable farming so effectively, by fencing off the land into pasture for greater profit, the landowners took the rights of the common people to earn a living from the land. This was serious stuff - it meant that whole areas where depopulated as people could no longer afford to live in the area. Initially the government and the church brought in measures to kerb this "depopulating enclosure" but the wealthy landowners were able to use their influence to change legislation and have their way. The motive for profit for a wealthy and influential minority was allowed to overcome the greater good for the majority of the population.

So what on earth has this got to do with ebooks? This week the Publishers Association announced (at a CILIP conference no less) that it will seek to restrict the downloading of ebooks in public libraries (see the comments of Ian Clark and Phil Bradley for a balanced opinion). If this intention is realised it will mean that users of ebooks will have to travel to the library to download a copy of an ebook - basically the PA would seek to end remote downloads. Ostensibly this is a reaction to an authority making ebooks available to people who are not local residents. Overdrive, one of the main companies that provide a system for lending ebooks have been quick to address this concern. The Overdrive system is a "one book-one user" model. Which means that only one user can be reading a copy of an ebook at one time. After their loan period is up the book expires and is no longer readable on the users ebook reader.

So, libraries are not "giving away" something which the publishers make their living from selling, they are merely lending it. This model works in the same spirit as libraries have always lent print books. So what is the PA's beef? Libraries and publishers have managed to coexist for aeons. Libraries lend print books and people still buy them from bookshops. So why would the publishers association object to a system that allows the same to happen for ebooks? I'd like to suggest that perhaps the publishers aren't really worried about going out of business because of libraries lending ebooks, they just want an even bigger slice of pie.

Let's return to the print book world for a second. Let's pretend booksellers were in charge. What do you think the booksellers would decide if they were given the choice of libraries existing or not existing? Would they be tempted to abolish print libraries so that they could sell a few more copies of books to individuals or would they protect the rights of the public to access that information?

There's not much I'm proud of the UK for, but I am actually blown away by the fact that I live in a country where the public have a right, set down in legislation, to borrow information. The Public Lending Right is a rare gem in that it protects the rights of the public to access information from the commercial interests of those who profit from selling it. It means that regardless of your socioeconomic status, you have the right to walk into a library and  access the information you need to be an informed and active member of society.

So what this is really about is the Publishers Association attempting to use it's commercial clout, and confusion about what ebooks are, the way they are borrowed, and what the Public Lending Right covers to prevent libraries from lending ebooks in the same way as print materials. As librarians, I believe that we need to speak up  on this issue (blog, tweet, comment, talk!) to ensure that the profit margins of booksellers is not allowed to affect the rights of the population to access ebooks.

 

HLG Conference Presentation

A day of firsts for me today. First trip to Manchester (it rained!), first visit to the Health Libraries Group (HLG) conference (it was interesting - I wish I could have seen more) and also my first time presenting at a conference (it was scary!).

It was quite a full on day as travel to the conference involved: walk to Southampton Airport (luckily just down the road from us), flight to Manchester Airport, bus to station, train to Manchester Picadilly, tram to Salford Quays, then a short walk through the quay to The Lowry.

The venue was great - I managed to get there in time to catch the morning session on change management in NHS libraries - interesting few case studies on merging trust library services and something I'll need to be aware of for supporting our students whilst in the NHS...

Then it was lunch break and I had a look at a few vendor stands then took a stroll to gather my thoughts before presenting in the afternoon session. The presentation was about the need for information literacy - especially for health professionals - the challenges that we face in higher education in delivering this, and how our approach at Bournemouth (particularly our Using Information Community within the VLE) is meeting these challenges.

It was interesting to me from the other two presentations (from librarians in the NHS) how the same themes ran through what we're doing - despite working for very different types of library alot of our goals re: information literacy, and the challenges we face, are the same. The PILLARS VLE work is certainly something I'll be taking a closer look at.

I'd prepared two slide decks - one a standard powerpoint and one using http://prezi.com as a more visual presentation. Unfortunately the kit wasn't geared up towards prezi just yet so it was lucky I had the powerpoint as a backup.

It'd be a shame to waste the prezi so here it is...

The Using Information Community (and beyond!): Exploring the potential of online communities in delivering information literacy on Prezi

Bridging the Skills Gap: Developing Innovative Library Support for Researchers

Oh yeah. I just remembered this blog was supposed to be a record of professional development. This one's about the Developing Innovative Library Support for Researchers conference at Sussex Uni on Tuesday 8th June 2010. It's rough and ready but here's my record (largely taken from Tweets so apols for the grammar)...

Welcome
Bob Allison, Stephane Goldstein, Alison Mitchel

Bob kicked off with a reminiscence of Philip Larkin while he was an undergraduate  at Hull and a tale about graffiti in the library - but on a more serious note he recognised the role that libraries and librarians play in research with a reflection on a conversation with a librarian after a successful RAE in 2001. The librarian felt part of the research process and was glad that the RAE was a success, something which stuck with Bob. There was also some mention of the fact that library buildings and spaces are changing to accommodate researchers and that libraries are one of the most rapidly changing areas of HE at the moment.

Stephane Goldstein, with the 1st keynote highlighted some of the work of RIN. RIN look at the interface between researchers and information - including looking at researchers behaviour - they've found that digital literacy is often inadequate. RIN's main study "mind the skills gap" http://ow.ly/1VwwY found that a gap between researchers perceived info skills and their actual skills. Researcher Development Framework is an opportunity to coordinate joined up approach to research support. A JISC call for proposals to promote data management training, funding 6 projects, was also mentioned.

Alison Mitchell delivered the 2nd keynote on researcher development. Expressed importance of researcher's information skills being transferable to jobs beyond HE. Vitae aims are about developing researchers skills rather than geared towards specific research. Roberts funding is now coming to an end - now it's up to institutions to decide how research is embedded in the organisation. There's a need to develop the marketability of researcher's skills in the employment market and info. skills are part of that skillset. On the Vitae website the "rugby team impact framework" (http://ow.ly/1VwWd) includes a tool for measuring the impact of training workshops. The good practice part of Vitae site will include examples of training materials. Alison mentioned a 100K "Innovate" fund for innovative ideas for researcher development projects.

Gearing up for e-thesis
Isobel Stark - I didn't go to this session.

MI512: Information support for researchers at LSE library
Rowena-Macrae-Gibson
Rowena Macrae-Gibson spoke about MI512: Information Literacy tools for researchers - (blogs of the breakouts are on the ning site). The MI512 researcher information literacy programme is non-credit bearing - researchers use their own research subjects so have useful outputs. The programme integrates skills e.g. the referencing and citation workshop is linked to endnote session and they help to make sense of each other. Referencing is one of the most active, and best attended sessions. NB: orcid (sp?) open source version of researcher id. LSE decided not to include their federated search tool in MI512 as they believe it isn't useful for phd level searches. MI512 was judged to be a success - good numbers of research students are booking onto programme - despite it being non-credit bearing. Good example of cross-departmental working (IPE element?). It is important to measure impact of training and good feedback from researchers helps to maintain management support for programme.

The Research Liaison Team at Sussex: an innovative model
Joanna Ball, Helen Webb

Waving and definitely not drowning!: Offering library support for academic research in a Google world
Annamarie McKie - i didn't go to this session.

Supporting the REF at the University of Brighton
Suzanne Tatham, Helen Woodward
Suzanne Tatham, Helen Woodward Spoke about supporting the REF at
Brighton (actually they changed the title from REF to Research in light
of recent news). They found that one of the biggest challenges is
getting message of what's available e.g. workshops/tutorials etc. over
to researchers.Their information skills workshops are administered by
the university wide workshop booking system and appear alongside IT,
numeracy and all other workshops - so researchers have one place to go
for all of their skills. Another benefit is that admin/ bookings are
done by the training admin team. All workshops are also available
online for those that can't make it in person. As part of their
researcher skills offering, Brighton run a bibliometrics workshop. It's
attended by staff, research students, RA's, librarians. One comment
from bibliometrics workshop was that some didn't know what a "citation"
was. Can't assume prior knowledge of basic researcher skills. Scemago
(sp?) was mentioned as an open access alternative to scopus - also
Ulrich's show's where journals are indexed if they are not in WoS.
Brighton's workshop booking system includes online form for session
feedback - can email form to all attendees. Brighton also do a Google
Scholar for citation analysis for subjects not well covered by WoS or
Scopus - they highlight the downsides but also that it covers books/
conference proceedings etc. There followed some interesting comparison
of different results for no's citations using WoS, Scopus and Google
Scholar. In the questions at the end, the common need to support researchers
with which journals to publish in and making sense of the REF for
researchers were identified as challenges.

Information skills training for researchers: the Surrey experience
Gill Downham, John Baxter
Gill Downham and John Baxter on "Information skills training for researchers: The Surrey perspective". The organisational structure at Surrey includes 2 teams - Researchers development team, Institutional repository team and Academic liaison team. The space is also important - Surrey cleared a floor of print journals to make flexible learning space for researchers and undergrads. Use tried and tested methods for developing researcher info skills: new student inductions, specific workshop sessions, 1-2-1's. Surrey's experience is that students arrive with a diverse range of skills. Their generic induction for research students - includes a recommendation that students make an appointment to see their AL librarian for a 1-2-1. Surrey include a presentation on using their repository for increasing citations in their "Getting Published" workshop - so that use of the repository is grounded & in the context of research support.

Kitty Inglis summed up... key message thatlibraries and librarians play central part in research - huge potential to collaborate & collaboration is essential in a climate of having to do the same or more with the same or less. The event evaluation was done using clickers - which was more fun than filling in a form.

"Nurture the Belbin plant"

This is a post on my personal blog about the CILIP in Hants and Wight AGM yesterday. Now that we have our own sub-branch blog I'll post a slightly different version on there also...

...but this one's about what I got out of it personally - so mostly it's about the excellent presentations from Linda Jones and Timothy Collinson.

The theme was the Darkside and the Brightside of the web, with Linda taking the former and Timothy the later. I liked that both presentations allowed audience to participate. Some quite dry topics (like copyright) were dealt with in an interesting and engaging way. As well as demonstrating an understanding of the topic, both presentations showed an understanding of how people learn.

Dark side

The  first of the two presentations was about the dark side. The session kicked-off with newspaper clippings of cautionary tales of the Internet (all from last month) handed out to all . Seeing such a massive folder of clippings about how the internet or public disclosure had somehow gone wrong for folks made quite an impact.
The first topic chosen by the audience was copyright  ("you can tell it's a room full of librarians!"). One example was a 10 minute movie on YouTube called "A Fair(y) Use Tale" - a mashup comprised of Disney clips that explains copyright (irony fans will love this).

Another topic was a Facebook T&C's activity (with sweets) - or perhaps more broadly, getting us to think about what we're signing up to on the web. Sometimes it does pay to read the T&C's! Other examples related to passwords - i.e. lists of commonly used passwords and public disclosure (Tony Blair itinerary being disclosed by his daughter on Facebook for e.g.).

Normally, I switch off to cautionary tales about using the Internet. In my early days as a librarian I heard lots of scaremongering born of fear of the unknown. I think the reason Linda's presentation was so good was she wasn't saying don't use the Internet, just that you should be a bit savvy when you do. One of the key messages was to use the Internet to evaluate the Internet  - if something looks a bit iffey - Google it!

Bright side

Timothy's presentation was about really positive uses of the Internet. About getting user participation - particularly in a HE setting. An interesting concept was his use of Analog -> Digital twitter. This was a fantastic way to get people engaged with Twitter without having to have everybody logged into a computer. At the start of the session the audience were given slips of paper and encouraged to write short messages or thoughts (tweets to the initiated) which were collected and entered to a twitter account through the session. For anyone who's been itching to use Twitter for collaboration in the classroom but has been struggling for a way to do it without everyone: a) having an account and knowing how to use it; and b) having to be logged in to their own computer - here's an answer.

Timothy illustrated a number of positive uses of the internet - especially good examples of web 2.0 usage at UoP.  Their Thing of the Day blog is definitely worth a look as it sneaks IL into posts among more esoteric entries such as Hats of Meat! The key message for me was that librarians need time to play and be creative! "Nurture the Belbin plant in your organisation" was Timothy's parting shot - definitely something to think on.

All in all, top notch. It's a day and several glasses of wine later, for somebody with a goldfish memory like mine to recall this much is testimony to the quality of the presentations.

Good advice about choosing which journal to publish in

Further to my last couple of posts, I've just come across some good advice on selecting which journals to submit articles for publication in an article from Pediatric Radiology (Griscom 1999). The main point of the article is to select realistic journals. The example given is the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA. Both have extremely high standards, but also have generalised readerships. They are only likely to publish articles that are broadly applicable or transferable across the whole medical profession.

So, it may be more realistic to publish in journals that are more specific to the field of your research. I guess one question that's worth asking is, are you more likely to be cited by publishing in a journal that has a large generalist readership (where only a small set of those readers are interested in your subject) or in a journal with a smaller readership, but one that is closer to your research?

Griscom suggests authors ask a number of questions about a publication when shortlisting journals to publish in:

"Are there articles like yours in the journal you are considering?

Do you like the articles that you read there?

Are the editors and readers of these journals likely to be interested in your work?

Is this the audience you hope to reach?

If you answer "yes," turn to their instructions
for authors and read them carefully. Can you adapt
your material to fit those instructions (which you must
follow) without too much strain?" (Griscom 1999)

References:

Griscom, N.T., 1999. Your research: How to get it on paper
and in print. Pediatric radiology, 29, 81-86. Available from: http://www.springerlink.com/content/38cmdxn17l2a5y6e/fulltext.pdf

Publishing for the REF?

I'm increasingly being asked to support our staff and PhD students in the field of publishing. I guess from two angles:

1) What sources can we use to determine good publications to target - especially in the context of the REF.
2) Are there any good sources of guidance on writing for publication.

For the first I'm going have to develop my knowledge of the REF a bit. It's all very well being aware of the sources that folks can use (e.g. JCR, Web of Knowledge, Scopus) but these things need to be taken in the context of what the REF is going to be assessing. Are measures such as impact factors the 'be all and end all', or will the REF take other factors into consideration?

To help me with this I'm taking a look at this document:

HEFCE, 2009. Report on the pilot exercise to develop bibliometric indicators for the Research Excellence Framework. http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2009/09_39/#exec [Accessed 12 February 2010].

It outlines the pilot study to 'develop the bibliometrics element of the Research Excellence Framework'. I think it's worth emphasising that bibliometrics is just one element of the REF and other factors may need to be taken into account when choosing where to publish. One of the key points of the study is the conclusion that bibliometrics are not robust enough to replace expert review... but citation analysis may inform the review. Another finding is that the effectiveness of bibliometrics varies depending on your subject area (i.e. bibliometrics are going to be more effective in those subject areas that rely most heavily on journals for dissemination).

So how do you know how important bibliometrics are going to be in in informing expert review in your subject area? Annex H. of the document above is a study on the availability of citation data in different subject areas and offers some analysis of how important citations might be. For my area (Health and Social Care) it's mixed news!

‘Health sciences’ is a mixed area. Many staff are professionally engaged and used
practitioner journals not well covered by commercial data. Others are in areas that
provide excellent bibliometrics. This is therefore an area in which bibliometrics may be
seen by some commentators to provide useful information but which in practice cannot
be assumed to provide sufficient information without support from peer review. (HEFCE 2009: 154)

This suggests to me that expert reviews in health sciences will not rely solely on citations (as they recognise that many practice based researchers will be disseminating research in professional journals). I think the holy grail as far as choosing where to publish goes, will be to find journals that do well in JCR and on Scopus but are also well read by practitioners.

References

HEFCE, 2009. Report on the pilot exercise to develop bibliometric indicators for the Research Excellence Framework. Bristol: HEFCE. Available from: http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2009/09_39/#exec [Accessed 12 February 2010].

Google Alerts for @ciliphw

Yesterday I spent a happy afternoon creating some Google Alerts for a local library news feed (eventually this will go through @ciliphw). After playing about a bit with a few searches I decided on using Google Alerts because you can restrict your search to particular sources (e.g. Portsmouth News or Basingstoke Gazette). What I was finding if I tried a normal Google Search using keywords (like "hampshire) to restrict the search was that you just get a load of stuff that's not really relevant. I was really after news from local papers and Google Alerts indexes local papers and allows you to specify which papers you search.

The first step was to decide which papers to look for. The next step was to find out what Google Alerts calls them and create a search. For each newspaper I created an alert looking for articles containing any of the words "library" "libraries" "librarian" or "CILIP". For some papers I could see a few results and check that the articles were sort of relelvant. Others hadn't published anything on libraries recently so didn't display any results. In these cases I double checked that I had the source name right by taking out the key words. If the search then displayed other articles published in that paper I could be confident that I had the source name right and then put the keywords back in to create the alert.

Google Alerts allows you to output your alert either as an email or as a feed. I opted for feed but didn't change any of the other settings. This proved to be a mistake as, when I checked on the feeds this morning they'd picked up a load of (seemingly random) stuff. I think the answer is that Google Alerts can be restricted to certain media (e.g. Newspapers) or "Comprehensive". As I'd left the option set as comprehensive I think that (even though I'd restricted the search to a particular news source in each case) as well as picking up newspaper artciles the search was also picking up blogs and other sources. Now I've changed that setting to "News" so hopefully, when I check the feeds later they'll just contain published local news articles. Hopefully.

Once the feeds are looking right I can plug them into @ciliphw via TwitterFeed...

CILIPHW feeds: To do list

I need to improve the feeds going in to our CILIP sub-branch twitter stream (@ciliphw). At the moment there's a feed from a basic Google News search going in. It's ripped via Dapp Factory then fed in via Twitter feed. Unfortunately the search isn't brilliant and it's picking up a lot of irrelevant stuff. I thought of rss'ing a normal Google search but it's hard to pick up genuine library stories without getting stuff that mentions libraries in other contexts.

Looking at search results, I think the best option is to identify the local newspapers sites then do Google site searches. So the to do list is as follows...

1) Identify all the local papers
2) Search local papers using Google and sort results by dates
3) Get feeds of the search results (either using Google alerts or Dapp Factory)
4) Aggregate the feeds into the twitter stream using the tag #news using twitter feed.

After that I think there are a couple of other sources that might be useful to add to the Twitter stream:
1) CILIPHW news. Hopefully we should have a blog on CILIP communities soon and can take a feed from this for our events etc. #events
2) Local library blogs. #blogs
3) Local library jobs. #jobs (similar to @UKlibraryjobs but for Hants and Wight)

Hopefully, if all goes well, it will also make a good example of a simple mashup for a talk that I'm giving at work in a few weeks.

Don't Ask Me To Censor Myself - It Makes Me Grumpy

It's a couple of days now since I got a comment on my work blog asking if I could put "UK ONLY" in the title of all of my posts. My first reaction to this was bemusement but the more I thought about it the more angry it made me. In effect, the commenter was asking me to censor my own content. To restrict the group of people who are able to gain value from the content I post. I hope that I've thought about it enough now to put together a rational post rather than a rant but I apologise if I do end up venting spleen!

The Boring Bit

First, a bit of background. My work blog is very specific. It's a summary of every book and journal that I buy for the library. The entries are tagged with subject, format, and location tags as well as some unique tags that allow me to feed the entries back to the library web page. At first, I was dubious that the blog would get any hits but it did start to get readers. Soon, folks started to comment on the books and putting links to allow readers to request books and journal articles from the blog entries has led to a steady flow of requests - which at the end of the day is what it's all about.

The company that I work for is large. In excess of 300,000 people around the globe. My library serves the UK but, due to licensing for e-resources and practical considerations for hard copy, we can only supply info to the UK. In light of this, the request to restrict blog entries to the UK may seem reasonable. Or does it? Why did it irk me so? And why will I not be putting off people who can't borrow my resources from reading about them?

Let Consumers Decide What is Useful

Well, even if people aren't able to access my resources it can still be helpful for them to know about them. The blog has had many comments from people all over the world who have asked for more information about how to access the resources. In some cases I've been able to put them in touch with local libraries. In others cases they've bought copies from Amazon. Whilst the aim of the blog is to increase local use of resources putting it on a global forum allows others to reuse and benefit from the information.

Unfettered User-Generated Content Is What It's All About

In a broader sense I think it's important for Web 2.0 content producers not to second guess who might derive value from that content. User generated content, for me, is what Web 2.0 is all about. In a sense, there's no such thing as bad content because what Web 2.0 gives us as consumers of information is the ability to select the information that's relevant to us and ignore the rest. It's up to the content users rather than the content producers to censor the information. If content producers start to censor or restrict access to their information the amount of information in the system is restricted and Web 2.0 starts to fall over. By all means use tagging to target your user group and help users to filter out your info if they don't need it, but don't put people off of reading your content.

I can see that to anyone used to a traditional way of working asking someone to restrict their readership geographically may seem reasonable but it seems that Web 2.0 has changed the game - allowing content producers to benefit users that were previously out of reach and consumers fine control over the information that they are exposed to. I, for one, will not be censoring my own content.

RT @DarthVader "Come to the dark side - we have cake"

Just how, you might ask, is the statement above of any use to an information professional? And you'd have a point. Personally, it made me laugh, so that is good in itself but I can see that to justify using Twitter in the work place a lot of folks will need more business justification than just getting a chuckle every now and then.

I've been using Twitter for a couple of weeks now and it's made quite an impression on me. This post is an attempt to clarify how I've found it so far and work out some of the pro's and con's as I see them.

Email, instant messaging, phone, visitors blog comments - why on earth would I want another distraction from my "job"?

So, how did I come to Twitter? Well, I'm finding that if you using one Web2.0 application tends to expose you to others. In my case I've been blogging about new resources inside the firewall at work for about 2 years now. Inevitably, I was exposed to other blogs and some I now read regularly (as well as browsing recently published posts every now and then). I feel I've received far, far more useful information than I've published but that's one of the benefits of Web2.0. When you get a group of active users adding content there is soon going to be a massive store of information that everyone has the potential to benefit from. Recently I've seen quite an increase in the number of blog posts about our internal version of Twitter, to the point where I decided to check it out, again as a means to publicise new library resources. Initially, I just wanted to scope out the scene so I posted a "hello world" and sat back to observe the etiquette and norms. Alot of the chat was very technical but every now and then someone would post a question that I was able to answer. This felt kind of good. One of my favourite bits about being a librarian is answering questions. Wheras my initial interest was about promoting new books through microblogging I soon found that it had the potential to be another channel for users to communicate with the library. To answer the question above: put simply, the distractions are my job.

Joining Twitter outside the firewall was sort of serendipitous. I'd posted a comment on librarything and one of the responses (from @jmgold) led to my first dipping my toe into Twitter. I still maintain that he'll be contacted by my lawyers re: the rehabilitation costs.

Effect on connecting with new users, good. Effect on workflow, stress levels and time management, v. bad!

This might just be me but I've found that opening any new channel of communication is very stressful and disruptive. I won't lie, the last couple of weeks have not been my most productive. BUT, I have stuck with it for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I went through exactly the same when I first tried Second Life at work, and when I first started blogging. With the blog, I've found that as you get more experienced with the medium you work out how to manage it. With Twitter there is a very strong compulsion to check for new messages every five minutes. This kind of wears off after a while and learning to manage who you follow and getting a good sidebar viewer helps alot. I've even found that posting a sentence about what I'm doing every now and then helps me to focus on the task. My second reason for sticking with it is that I have proof that it is generating new library users. At first it was hard to guage the effectiveness in promoting new resources until the other day, literally seconds after tweeting about a new ebook I got an IM requesting an ebooks login. They said they love the book tweets and often follow the links to the library blog. 1 new user seems like a small payoff but I've been in this game just long enough to know that if 1 library user contacts you, there are probably another 10 who are accessing your resources without making themselves known. Sure enough, when I checked ebook usage today, it's well above average. If you manage it correctly the overhead is low. Posting a 140 character message takes what? A minute?

Who cares what you had for breakfast?

Talking to users and other librarians, I've heard quite a few objections to using Twitter. One is the shear amount of rubbish information on there. And to be fair, this is true. However, the point is that it is very easy to filter the information. At work, the user base is low enough to follow comment on the tool. Outside the firewall, you don't really want noise from a population equivalent to a medium to large country. Particularly, if you are using it in a professional capacity, you soon learn to only follow Twitterers who give good value. Everyone posts the odd whimsical post but most of the Twitterers that I continue to follow also post useful links, provoke discussion or raise awareness of important issues (or just have a different take on things). As a solo librarian, I have to say one of the main benefits of Twitter is that I now feel just that little bit more connected to my profession.

Social Media - the clue is in the name!

Another, criticism that I've heard is that it's hard to get the right kind of people following your Twitters. This can happen - for example, I seem to have collected a moderate following of spammers and life coaches!?! I think there are some ways to minimise this though. Firstly, get over the concept of using the Internet as a broadcast medium. The social web is just that - "social". Think quiet chat down the pub rather than standing on a soapbox with a megaphone. In practical terms I think this means following the sort of people that you want to follow you. If you complain about getting the wrong "types" of followers but make no attempt to connect with your library users (or potential users) then I think you're kind of missing the point. If you find it hard to justify spending work time "friending" people on the net just think of it as customer research. The penny pinchers love terms like "customer research" and who knows, you might learn something new about your users!

The second thing is to tweet. If you tweet about your field (i.e. library stuff) you will find relevant followers. More accurately, they will find you as one of the techniques for finding people to follow is to search entries for keywords. If your tweets contain relevant keywords and hashtags then people interested in the #library will find you. I guess relating to this, use your existing network. People who already follow you are likely to have contacts who would also be interested in following you.

To summarise in 140 characters or less...

Well, to be honest I can't, but here (as briefly as I can) are my pro's and con's:

I love Twitter because of...
Reaching new library users;
Finding out more about library users interests/ needs;
Professional awareness/ networking;
Useful sources of information, links, etc.;
Promoting resources

Twitter sometimes does my head in because...

Checking in with it can become addictive;
It's another channel of communication to "learn";
The spammers and life-coaches are sometimes annoying

Can you think of any other pro's and con's? I'd love to hear them if you can.

p.s. I rarely eat breakfast as I'm not a morning person :-)

Celebrity Deathmatch Social Bookmarking vs Wiki for Useful Links Pages

I'm hoping that putting this down in a blog entry will save me a bit of time in the long run. I'm working on the library web pages. The last page I need to produce content for is the Useful Links page. These are always a bit of a nightmare as the links inevitably go bad after a while and so they need a lot of maintenance. Also, it's really hard to build a comprehensive list - there are bound to be useful links that get missed off. Which is where Web 2.0 comes in. People expect to see a page of useful links on the library web page but wouldn't it be great to allow users to add their own links! Truly user generated content.

My first instinct was to create a wiki that folks could edit to add links or even maintain broken links if they came across them. I threw this idea onto our corporate version of Twitter and the suggestion came back to use our social bookmarking tool. So what are the pro's and con's of using one over the other. Here's a few off the top of my head.

How easy is it to set up?

I think social bookmarking wins on ease of setting up. The corporate tool available to me provides an rss feed (so it should be easy to adapt a bit of php to aggregate the bookmarks onto the library page) and there's also a firefox plugin for adding bookmarks and tagging them. Very simple. Setting up a wiki and setting user access and creating an interface for adding links will be a bit more time consuming (although maybe because I don't have any experience with the wiki engine). 1-0 to social bookmarking.

How easy is it to maintain?

I think the overhead here will be checking and fixing broken links and checking that content is appropriate. For both solutions the links will be rendered in straight html so should be able to be run through an automated checker. Checking for innapropriate links is a subjective thing so the process will be the same for both. I call a draw on this point.

How easy is it for users to add content?

The process for users to add a link using social bookmarking would just be to bookmark it in the tool with a predefined tag. My feeling is that alot of folks are happy with this concept already and, let's face it, it's not rocket science - should be able to provide instruction in a couple of lines. Editing a wiki may be a bit more difficult. I could make it easier by providing a form to edit the wiki (and this would help to ensure that the links and descriptions are in a standard format) but that'll add extra overhead to the implementation. The social bookmarking tool is also better integrated with other systems. Users could add links to the library page while adding them to thier own collection of bookmarks just by adding the library tag. 2-0 to social bookmarking.

How secure is it?

Both tools are inside the firewall and should therefore be secure. Score tied.

How much control will the library have over the content?

I think the wiki just about edges it on this one. With a wiki I can maintain the power to remove inappropriate links. Possibly a bit more flexible as well as it would be easy to allow users to make new categories for links (although I can always invite suggestions for categories (or tags) with the social bookmarking. Using tags to add content runs the risk that links people are not intending to go on the library page could end up there (unless the library tags are suitably obscure) BUT this is not necessarily a bad thing. I guess the risk of unintentional links is offset by serendipitous links that weren't intended for the library page but are useful anyway. Overall, the wiki wins this round but it's importance is debatable. 2-1

How much control will the library need?

Ha! Interesting question. I'm not sure that my library really does need the level of control offered by a wiki. I can see that the social bookmarking method would be prone to people maliciously tagging inappropriate sites BUT this is a corporate library. I like to think that the library users are mature and responsible. If not, it's still possible to see, who's tagged what - so if the worst came to the worst I could have a word with a malicious tagger and hopefully resolve any issues. I can see that this method probably wouldn't work in an academic or public library where there are different priorities for policing and protecting library users with regards to inappropriate content. I'd like to trust my users to tag me useful content - if they don't, well, chalk it up to experience.

Performance?

This is again specific to my setting. My gut feeling is that both tools have performance issues as they are still prototypes really. Social bookmarking edges this one because it should be possible for me to cache the rss feeds from the social bookmarking tool on my web server. That way, even if the tool goes down I'll have a cached version available. Using cached feeds will also be a more pleasant experience for the user as the page load should be pretty fast rather than waiting for the page to go and fetch the feed on every request. Page load times are a factor for the wiki tool as well as I have heard complaints that it can be slow. Overall I'll have more control over the performance of the social bookmarking method whereas if the wiki servers are being slow or go down then the page is scuppered. 3-1 to social bookmarking.

We have a winner. 3-1 to Social Bookmarking

So, it looks like we have a winner! It stikes me that these score is very specific to me, to my experience (or lack of it), and my setting. For others, who maybe need more control over content or have more experience with wikis, or access to a stable wiki engine it could have gone a very different way. Are there any other factors that need to be taken into account? Do you disagree on any of my arguments? Do you have experience of either of these methods? It'd be great to hear if you do.

And in the end...

...the love you take is equal to the love you make. Is it? I hope so. The portfolio is printed in triplicate and waiting to get bound and posted next week along with the mentor completion form, so now's a good time to reflect on the process (the blog's kind of fallen by the wayside while I've bene writting the portfolio but, if any future candidates should stumble across this I'd really recommend using a blog to build relective evidence).

So, the theme of this entry, what I'm reflecting on now, is what a GREAT PROFESSION I'm entering (yes you heard me folks - this is about positivity!). I've been very fortunate to have had two amazing mentors. Both have spent time to review documents, have meetings etc. Both have given me great advice (not only about the chartership process but also about the professional issues that I've encountered over the past year) and encouragement. Most importantly, both have pushed me, originally to set meaningful objectives in the PPDP and more recently to see them through.

I guess what I'm really wondering is why? I've been thinking just how lucky I am to be in a profession where (very busy) people are prepared to give a bit of their time and experience to mentor somebody just starting out. I guess this goes beyond the whole chartership thing. While I was taking my MSc. folks always took the time to ask how I was getting on, helped with research and help me getting hold of literature. In the workplace, people have always been ready to share their experience. In my current role for example, the former incumbent happens to work in the same place in a different role. She took time to show me the ropes and still takes time to go for coffee every now and then. Sound things out and generally keep me (as a solo librarian) sane.

I hear a lot of critisism. Both of the profession in general and CILIP in particular. Some of this is starting to grate a bit now. I think my attitude to CILIP has changed over the past year. I felt a bit squeezed out of the public sector having qualified just as a (particularly nasty) restructure hit. At the time I wondered why CILIP didn't do more and weren't more vocal. Now I realise that is probably beyond their remit. They are a professional body not a trade union. What was sad at the time was the tactics that management used to divide professional and para-professional staff. With this division, the effectiveness of collective action was severely hampered and the hatchet fell on the professional side of the workforce. Was that CILIP's fault? On reflection probably not. The failure was primarily with senior management but also (despite my leftist leanings) I have to criticise the union for not protecting it's members against the divisive tactics of senior mangement and unifying the workforce (the are called Unison after all).

The other criticism I hear of CILIP is the cost-benefit thing. How many times have you heard winges about the cost of membership and "what do you get for it?". Well, I'm here to say, there is loads out there if you make the effort to find it. Here in Hampshire there are tons of events and they are often free (or if not they are very cheap). At Ridgemount Street there's stuff going on weekly. If you're prepared to make the effort there are SO MANY ways that CILIP can help you to develop within your profession.

So, is it all sunshine and roses? No, of course not. This is a difficult time but it's important to remember that it's a difficult time for EVERYONE. I honestly feel that in a profession full of people who just LOVE TO HELP others, we are better prepared than many to make it through the hard times.

What's my hope for the future? Well, pass or fail, my hope is that I can give back to the profession (by that I mean library people) as much as it has given me. If we can all Come Together then I've a feeling that the future is very bright. There's a bit from Bob Dylan's autobiography which as always stuck with me. It's about his grandma saying something like.
"Everyone you know is struggling. Try to be nice". Most of the library staff I know live that every day.

I fought the law and the law won

I've been thinking alot about the law lately. Learning about copyright law was not really on the PDPP but it's become an issue, not only with the objective to improve access to the journals collection but also because I seem to be doing more and more document supply. I've never really understood copyright in libraries before. I was aware that I had to get declaration forms signed and the limits on copying but never really understood the "why".

Things are a bit different working for a corporate library than in the public sector because of the nature of requests for document supply. In a public library, the chances are that most users are requesting documents for non-commercial research or private study. Copyright declaration forms are signed as a formality so that libraries can prove in law that they have supplied non-copyright cleared articles in good faith. If the user then uses the information in a commercial way then the responsibility is theirs because the library have a record to show that they stated the document was for private use only. In a corporate library, you have to assume that most of the articles are being supplied for commercial purposes. Luckily, the British Library (my main document supplier) make it really easy to pay copyright. Anything I get from the British Library, I get copyright cleared as you have to assume that the information will be used in a commercial way. Ok, so somebody could be using it for private study but what if they then go on to use that intellectual capital in a product that gets patented? It's just easier to get everything cleared. In a way, this makes life really easy. If you've paid the copyright, just keep a record of the request and the user no need for getting copyright declaration forms signed as the copyright's been paid.

But what about copying from journals that the library takes or document supply from more local sources? I think working in a corporate library makes supplying copies from your own stock a bit more complicated. In a public library it is permissible to copy from your own stock within the limits of fair dealing and library privilege as long as you obtain a copyright declaration from the user. In a corporate library you have to assume that the use is going to be commercial - so you need a mechanism to pay copyright. This basically means that you need a copyright licensing agreement. These are dished out by the CLA and are normally negotiated by the company lawyers. The chances are most big companies don't consult their librarians when negotiating an agreement and they tend to be based on numbers of employees or types of job roles. It's then up to the CLA to share the wealth (the revenue from the fee for the License) with the publishers.

I have to say that I don't like this system. It works fine for organisations as a whole but libraries have specialised copying requirements that may fall outside of their company's CLA. If this is the case then the library has to refuse to copy on the grounds that they would be breaking the law. Users often find this hard to understand and may think that librarians are being unnecessarily over-cautious (or even wilfully obstructive). It would be great if there were a kind of pay-per-copy option available. In the States, some vendors are setting themselves up in this way as brokers between publishers, licensing agencies and information providers and using technology to make direct payments to publishers as items are copied. This is kind of getting there but it cuts library collections out of the loop - these vendors have access to huge collections and basically supply copyright cleared copy's (as well as putting their profit on top). What would be great, is if there was a mechanism for libraries to copy from their own collections but also pay copyright fees (outside of their company's CLA's). That way it would be possible to supply outside of "approved" lists, and, with modern technology this sort of system shouldn't be beyond the CLA.

So what have I learned from all of this? Well, where copyright is concerned I've learned that it's good to talk. For example, supplying British Standards from the local public library service should be a real no-no but talking to the user, it turned out that their use was for a private project and not for commercial gain. The user was really happy that I could supply the documents (after getting a signed declaration!) and (as there was no cost to the library) it was quite satisfying to be able to use my knowledge of local resources to help somebody out. Another example of talking was to a lawyer who uses the library. This was a kind of informal chat about whether my idea of blogging journal t.o.c.'s would be legal. His advice was to seek official guidance from the specialist who deals with the CLA. As it turned out this was really good advice as the service as I had envisaged it would have infringed copyright. Not all bad though as the copyright lawyer was able to explain the limits of the CLA so that the service can be adapted to be comply with it. The most important thing that I have learnt is that corporate librarians can't work with the same norms of copyright as public librarians. It's always best to check with your legal people before developing anything as basically, if you're a corporate librarian, you are going to be governed by your CLA (fair dealing and library privilage are concepts that apply only to non commercial or private research). As CLA's are negotiated on an individual basis you need to talk to someone who knows the nature of yours.

I guess this also represents a change of attitude. I've always been really pro-freedom of information but, thinking about it, copyright is there to protect the intellectual property of authors, artists, etc from theft. It's right that company's using intellectual property should recompense the owner, although I'm not sure I'd apply this to personal use (for example copying music). Despite the title I still can't bring myself to agree with the music industry's extreme definition of pirating or the way that they fight their corner...

Ambient Findability : What we find changes who we become (book review)

This is a cross-posting of my review on librarything...

This is the book that has most influenced my thinking about my profession. Probably ever. I've sort of been coming to see books as boundary objects - as objects that connect people or concepts (like on this site) - for a while now and think that libraries need to make much more of the social networking power of books. This book gave me some vocabulary for these concepts but (although it's written by a librarian and I read it as a librarian) this is much more than a library book. It basically explains a number of concepts that are all converging to create a situation where objects (like books), people, anything, will be ambiently findable. The findability will be built in. A number of concepts are explained. Ubiquitous computing (the techie side of things); the long-tail (the economic forces that will drive these developments); spimes (objects that have precise history, that can be precisely tracked in time and space); and boundary objects (objects that sit on the boundary between two concepts). I'll be following up on some of the books referenced in this later to try and get a better understanding but I think this is the one that really pulls everything together. The author has a really good view of where these concepts are coming together and what the implications are. Brilliant.

Classification doom and gloom

The more I look at this objective the more I rue the day I wrote it. Initially, I thought that it would just involve splitting up some of the larger groups into sub-groups to facilitate browsing but the more I look at the classification (and I think more importantly the more I understand about the subject) the more I realise that there are some fundamental errors with the system. The first is the choice of system - it's based on a "book data" classification which must have been published in the late 80's/ early 90's. It hasn't worn so well in my opinion as computing has moved in ways that could have never been predicted back then. As subjects have come and gone the classification has become fragmented in some areas (for example web development is now the best part of a bay away from web design).
I have the benefit of hindsight but it occurs to me that this classification never had the legs for the long haul. It names specific products for example. Some of which have long gone and are now taking up valuable space in the classification even though there are no books of the shelf. Maybe it's my science background coming back to haunt me but I think I'd prefer it if the classification moved from general to specific in a more graduated way - for example a number for Computing - Applications - Databases and then use the decimal part for specific products. Same for Computing - Programming - Programming Language Type (e.g. Scripting Languages) - Specific Language. This poses a number of questions:

1) Can it be done?
2) How can it be done with the least negative impact on users?
3) Should it be done? Would time be better spent on other things?

The first two are fairly easy to answer. Yes, of course it can be done. The current numbering system could be adapted fairly easily to move in a better way from general to specific so that similar topics are grouped together and are not fragmented. It's also possible to have groups specific enough so that they are not too big to browse using the current numbering BUT re-classifying on the scale that's needed will mean significant moving of stock. How to minimise the impact? I think it would be essential to do as much of the work without moving stock as possible - re-writing the classification, mapping stock to new numbers, and producing the new numbers can all be done without touching the stock. What would be needed then is to pick a really quiet time to reclassify the library - it would have to be Christmas. Then it would be a case of working through the catalogue shelf by shelf and re-stickering the books, editing the catalogue and putting messages on stock that's out to change the stickers on return.

Should it be done? Don't know. It's clear that some reclassification is needed but can I justify a complete reclassification?

Building Your Portfolio : The CILIP Guide by Margaret Watson

This is a cross-posting of my review on librarything...

I thought this was a really well thought out and useful book (for anyone building a CILIP portfolio under the current regulations). One thing that struck me was the range of backgrounds (and career paths) of the contributors. The book's well written and easy to read but I think the best thing about it is the way that it is organised. Each chapter tackles a different aspect of building a portfolio and examples are given for Certification, Chartership and Fellowship. Because the chapters all follow the same format, it's really easy to filter out the bits that aren't relevant to your programme and just focus on the bits you need. I read it in an evening and I'm not a quick reader. Another reason this book is useful is that it outlines the assessment criteria really well and also emphasises the reflective style that the assessors are looking for. From the training I've attended recently I'd say that these are the two key aspects. Demonstrate development in the criteria areas in a reflective way and I'd say you'll be ticking most of the boxes. There's also some useful tools outlined - most importantly, the evidence vs assessment criteria matrix looks like a really good way of ensuring that all of the boxes are ticked. The book is quite pricey (as are all Facet titles) but this one is also good quality. If you can borrow a copy from the library then do so. I made notes and copied a small section (within copyright limits!) and feel I've got most of the info out of the book. On the whole it's really good practical advice and the examples are just there to furnish this. If you read one book on the CILIP chartership process make it this one.

Infinity and Beyond

Ok - so the event was really called Chartership and Beyond but this way it's more fun. This was one of the CILIP run courses that are sort of mandatory if you want to charter. Overall I think it would have been more useful if I'd attended one sooner. There was an exercise on writting objectives and having an overview of the entire process before writting the objectives would have been useful. As it stands though I don't think any of my objectives are too unreasonable and one of the great things that I learnt is they are not set in stone. The course was pretty well organised. The venue is fairly easy to get to (it was interesting to see CILIP headquarters. It's just 5 mins from Goodge Street tube so I certainly won't write it off for other courses). The instructions sent out before the course were good and everything ran to time.

What was useful?

• Well there was further explanation of the assessment criteria. This has been a really strong theme on both of the courses that I have attended. If I take one thing from them it's that I need to complete "The Matrix" before I do my evaluative statement and write up (guess what the picture's going to be for that post!).
• Again reflective/ evaluative practice was emphasised. Submitting descriptive portfolios is consistently cited as the number one reason for failure.
  
• The event was sort of useful for networking but I felt it could have been better - more on that later...
• Some good examples of evaluative writting were given in the handout. I need to dig that out before I do my write up.

What was not so useful?

• The learning style (like the other course that I attended) was again very passive. I would have liked more activities.
  
• I think folks would have been more inclined to network if there had been a group activity or icebreaker early on. If this would have happened before the coffee break then I think making conversation in the break would have been easier. As it was the break was fine but I think maybe it was a missed opportunity as far as more lasting/ support type networking went.
• Timing. As mentioned above I should have attended earlier in the process but that's nobody's fault but my own.
  

Positives from this were the speakers - who were all very good. One guy (who was sharing his experience of having recently chartered) really exceeded my expectations. I thought that section would be too individual and personal to be of use to anyone else but he actually shared some really pragmatic and useful advice and, perhaps more importantly, helped to put the process in perspective for some of the more intense members of the group. Overall, having attended this one I think the Reflective Writing course was a bit surplus to requirements. It was adequately explained in this course that the statement has to be reflective rather than descriptive and it's also well explained in the book I recently read (stay tuned for a rave review!). If folks don't grasp it after that then is another course going to help them? It's nice that CILIP has identified this common point of failure but this is a professional standard so I'm of the mind that there's perhaps only so much hand-holding that they should do. Maybe these sort of opinions will come back to bite me!

In summary, if I had to attend a course (and I did) it'd be this one.

Doing less to do more with journals

Ok, I give up. After a month of fully indexing the table of contents of all of the journals that the library takes I have come to the conclusion that it can be done. Sort of. It takes too much time to index every single journal but I think indexing about half of the titles will be achievable. The trick is to find the right vehicle for publishing the tables of contents. I'm pretty sure that blogging these would be ideal as it will constantly generate new potential users and provide an easy publishing platform... but, it's also becoming clear that many of the blog visitors aren't in my user group. The key is to use the easy publishing offered by the blog but also feed it back to the library front page to ensure that it's getting out to the right people. This is going to take a fair bit of development time so I've made the decision to stop doing any journal indexing and spend the time developing the new platform. The current system doesn't generate any requests so it will be interesting to see if anyone complains when I stop indexing (and hence the title doing less to do more).

The experience of indexing everything was interesting. It took probably 1-2 hours a day -too long (especially during heavy book cataloguing times) but it did have some side benefits. I've found my current awareness and general subject knowledge (which helps nicely with another of my objectives!) was much improved by retyping toc's. It also forced me to be focused in order to get all of the work in. Really tiring after a few weeks - not sure I could keep that up for ever but it would be good on a limited basis. The next step is to develop the publishing platform and web site then select a few titles to trial. If I find that it works I might be able to get some other librarian's on board so that we can share the indexing workload.

How To Use Web 2.0 In Your Library (book review)

This is a cross-posting from my review on librarything...

This one was ok but not really what I was expecting. The book's starts off with a definition of Web 2.0 (including the ubiquitous Tim O'Reilly definition) and then goes on to introduce different forms of social software. Each chapter is well furnished with links and examples and the book's well laid out but somehow it didn't quite hit the spot for me. I think I would have preferred less in the way of links and examples and more along the lines of how, conceptually you can use these tools in the library. Maybe more assessment of potential benefits to users etc. There was also very little mention of the ethics of librarianship - something that I think is really important if libraries are going to enter this space. I guess I didn't really take any idea on what web 2.0 is from this book - that it's alot more than just blogging or uploading photos. The concept of extreme trust was mentioned in the first chapter but aside from that there was very little focus on the social phenomena that define web 2.0. Ok for sparking ideas but think carefully about implementing the ideas. Is Web 2.0 consistent with your libraries data protection policies and your duty of care to your users? That's not to say don't do Web 2.0 - it's great - just think about the issues involved as well as the techie side.