I was invited to speak at a UKSG event a couple of weeks ago (mentioned in a previous post) and have finally got around to posting about it now.

First off, here's my presentation:

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I went a little weird for this presentation - I wanted to do something a bit faster paced than the normal "slide / bullet, bullet, bullet : slide / bullet, bullet...." but probably not as ambitious as Simon Wardley or Dick Hardt. I think it went well - I've had a few people who were there contacting me and asking me to do the same presentation at their gaff, so it can't have been too bad...

In general I wanted to move away from the point I've been pressing for some time now ("web 2 - don't be scared") to something a bit more practical ("how to make the most of distributed services") - the main point being that it makes good sense to provide as well as consume distributed data. By doing so, a virtuous cycle is encouraged whereby more and more data becomes available to all.

There were some good speakers at the day and I made pages and pages of notes. I thought rather than publishing them as some kind of stream (and them meaning nothing to anyone..) instead I'd distill them down into three things that I felt kept coming up or were particularly pertinent:

1. Libraries and publishers are doing interesting things too

I think I gathered this from the reading I did before the event (see previous post linked above) but in particular I was impressed with the work that Talis are doing around their "Semantic Web Application Platform" and I fully intend to follow this up with an email or two and some more reading. Richard Wallis ("Technology Evangelist" - MY ALL TIME JOB TITLE...) from Talis did a good job of explaining the basics behind the distributed web.

Here's a couple more links I found when researching...

REST: http://www.daveyp.com/blog/index.php/archives/59/ , PATrest: http://www.blyberg.net/downloads/patrest_1.1_overview.pdf , AADL keyword REST search: http://www.aadl.org/rest/search/keyword/dog , Mashing the library: http://blogs.open.ac.uk/Maths/ajh59/007391.html
 

2. Blogging is sometimes being used because it's easier, not because it is necessarily the right thing

I already had a half-formed notion of this fact (I think I picked it up from Andy from the Eduserv Foundation?) at a completely different event when he'd described that he uses variously hacked blogging platforms to deliver content on his local primary school website. At the time I'd thought this was a little weird but never got round to asking him about it. Again at the UKSG event there were two occasions when it was very clear that people were writing and distributing content using blogs because the other systems were too hard to use / jealously protected / horrible legacy systems.

In one sense this is great: blogging tools are used because they are easy to set up, easy to use, easy to keep fresh with content. But in another this is a disaster: it speaks volumes about the situation whereby people at institutions around the country are turning to blogging as a way of doing what their CMS and IT departments should be doing for them already.

(IT departments: note the first part of the paragraph above: EASY is the key here, not FULL FEATURED ) 

3. People still seem convinced that the Semantic Web = Web 3.0

Even taking into consideration Simon's hatred of pointless debates I'm still going to embark on this one, 'cos I think it's just not correct that "the next web" (whatever that may be) is going to be the semantic one. It's always risky doing any kind of future-looking but I'll put my neck on the line and continue to reinforce my view: the next web is going to be about ubiquity, immersion, "everyware". Susan Wu agrees with me. So that's ok.  

This week I've been doing some research on "Library 2.0" - I'm presenting at a UKSG seminar called "Caught up in Web 2.0? Practical implementations and creative solutions for librarians and publishers" in November.

One of the better papers - or at least one which seems to have been well researched, and covers lots of interesting ground - is by a chap called Jack Maness and is called "Library 2.0 Theory: Web 2.0 and Its Implications for Libraries". It's a great introduction to what libraries are doing in the brave "new" world of Web 2.0, why they're doing it and what the particular challenges are. He doesn't unfortunately mention one of my favourite YouTube clips - an oldie but goodie: "Introducing the book" which I link to whenever given half a chance...

I've got a fair amount of experience of what the issues are facing museums in this space, and it's fascinating to spend some time looking at a parallel sector. Not only do the similarities come shining through, but I've found that looking at this from a different angle also sparks off some thinking which I haven't had before. It's refreshing to "know about Web 2.0" but to be naive about a particular application of the various technologies and techniques. My experience of libraries online has until recently been almost entirely limited to OPAC searches at university, which was a frighteningly long time ago, and the integration with Unicorn which we carried out as part of the NMSI Ingenious project.

So many of the challenges which we face as museums - challenges which I've frequently tried to articulate at various conferences - are echoed in the library world: What about authority? Can we cope with the resource implications? What does it cost? Why should we "do Web2.0"? What does the future hold?

Mr Maness does a great job in articulating the various approaches to Web2.0 in the library sector. I'd recommend reading the paper, especially if you're new to this sector. Here's a few choice snippets to tempt you..

"Library 2.0 is...communally innovative and rests on the foundation of libraries as a community service, but understands that as communities change, libraries must not only change with them, they must allow users to change the library..."

"Library 2.0 blurs the line between library and patron, creator and consumer, authority and novice"

He also focusses on the vital nature of the cross-over between physical and real - something which readers of my Electronic Museum blog know I bang on about a fair amount:

"Library 2.0 will show no distinction between or among formats and the point at which they may be accessed"

Once I've done my presentation at UKSG I'll of course post it to the web and link to it from here...