Competency 5: Tagging

In our course work we are exploring the use of tagging as an informal means to create metadata for the Worldwide Web.

After searching LibraryThing for a resource that ties in with my blog topic of Library 2.0 and the Academic Library, I found Cathy De Rosa's OCLC report on College Students' Perceptions of Libraries And Information Resources from 2006. The work examines the information-seeking habits and preferences of international college students and serves as a companion piece to the December 2005 OCLC Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources report.

It was exciting to see tagging in action: I located the resource on LibraryThing because other ordinary people as I am had informally tagged the resource with "library2.0," and I added the tag of "academic" for the level of libraries I'm interested in. Pretty cool.

The "cloud" of tags that have been
been assigned to De Rosa's report is represented by this cut-and-paste graphic to the right. Note that the greater the number of times a term has been assigned to the title, the larger, bolder the tag appears in the cloud. (You can see this cloud for yourself, and updated in real-time, at http://www.librarything.com/work/2722553.)

(I went to Amazon and found no one had tagged this report, so I started the page off with my own two, Library2.0 and academic. It's spreading.)
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Competency 4: displaying a pertinent RSS Feed

Competency 4 for the purposes of my course involves selecting an RSS feed relevant to this blog's dual theme of Library 2.0 and the academic library and then displaying that feed on this blog.

One blog I referred to earlier on this site was that of Suzanne Chapman, the interface and user testing specialist for the University of Michigan Library’s Digital Library Production Service. She maintains a blog on a wide range of topics that involve technology, user services, librarianship at the academic level and being a person who loves the library world.

The web site is called Userslib.com, and I think you'll enjoy watching and delving into some of her posts. (Click on the link for the name of her blog to go see what's up.)

I particularly like the relevant information she gives on the U of Michigan's efforts to more fully engage the user population. She's trying some of the most-talked about practices in Library 2.0, and it's interesting to see what she reports in response to the various attempts.

Note: due to the unfortunate layout of this (I think) attractive blog template, the Newsfeed must remain towards the top of the blog, separated from this post about the competency. It's right up there for you to see, and that's good. But this post about the rationale and competency may be less obvious. Good luck.

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Competency 3: linking to a podcast

One of the resources I'm examining in my study of Library 2.0 and the academic library setting is the format of podcasts. This format of information representation is one of the brighter lights in the sphere of Web 2.0 innovations that are impacting libraries today. (graphic from http://uk.gizmodo.com/ipod%20poster%20girl.jpg)

For those not familiar with the technology, it can be boiled down to this: audio files out there on the Internet (usually in MP3 format) that are available to download (meaning, "save to your computer or transfer to an MP3 player") or listen to in a streaming format (playing it instantaneously through your computer).

I was surprised by quantity and quality of podcast resources on this topic. I am coming late to this global discussion of Library 2.0, and there is a lot of information out there! For this post I used the Yahoo! Podcasts search engine (http://podcasts.yahoo.com/) with the terms "Library 2.0" and "academic." The combination yielded great links to pertinent material.

At least three pages of the American Library Association's web site (http://www.ala.org/) provide podcasts focusing on different interest areas. The ACRL division (Association of College and Research Libraries, the academic libraries organization) maintains a page of podcasts intended to "provide fresh dimensions on the issues and events in academic librarianship." The most recent offering there, from January 22, 2008, is entitled "Library 2.0 Initiatives in Academic Libraries," and that title mirrors their newly published ACRL book of the same name. Bingo! A perfect tie-in for my study.

In short, my rationale for including this podcast on my blog is its strategic relevance to my blog topic and the currency of its information.

In the podcast College & Research Libraries News Editor-In-Chief David Free discusses Library 2.0 with Dawn Lawson of New York University and Susan Sharpless Smith of Wake Forest University. In the interview, Lawson shares her experience using FaceBook (a social networking web site) to extend her library's outreach to its patrons, and Smith shares how she and her colleagues used L2 technology to make campus Information Literacy courses more relevant and interesting to the students.

The podcast is worth listening to (click on the hyperlinked podcast title above, or go to http://blogs.ala.org/acrlpodcast.php) as it shares the specific experiences of the two librarians as well as additional resources for those interested in L2 and the academic environment.

You may be interested to know that the ALA will maintain a wiki related to the Library 2.0 Initiatives book, http://www.acrl.ala.org/L2Initiatives/index.php?title=Main_Page, which will present updates on the case studies described in the book. A gift that keeps on giving!

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What is Library 2.0? (continued)

For individuals new to the library and information field, the concept of Library 2.0 may not mean a thing. But if you know about Web 2.0, then you have a good start.

During the last years of the 20th century the WorldWide Web moved from being a one-way,
authority-based environment to a more collaborative and participatory platform. Something like the first release of a software package, version 1.0, and the new, improved version, 2.0.

Things like user-provided content (think Flickr) and collaboration (think Wikipedia) began to be the norm. Web users now frequently contribute to web content (read any reviews on Amazon lately?), and the technology of website design has grown to incorporate user-focused changes in more and more pages.

Image shared from http://www.personalizemedia.com/index.php/2006/08/27/virtual-worlds-web-30-and-portable-profiles/

Growing out of that shift in the WWW and its technology has come a view of library services which focuses on user (or potential user) needs and wants. Granted, part of the impetus for change has been the growing competition with Internet search engines and their often unverified results that has slowly eroded the dependence on the local library as a source for the public's information needs.

Inevitably the print document, the very backbone of libraries, is being impacted by those very same technological changes. I'd like to be reading Friedman's The world is flat on a Kindle but there is still that cost issue.

Many folks knowledgeable about libraries and information trends in this increasingly wired environment believe that libraries --and librarians-- must change with the culture (update to a newer version, if you will) to remain relevant.

In coming posts I'll share specifics and examples of these trends. And I'll consider how these trends and innovations can and do impact the academic library and its place in the Information Age.

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Competency 2: sharing a relevant blog

Blogs relevant to considerations of Library 2.0 theory and practice are abundant! And the pleasing characteristic of many blogs is that they are kept up to date and share current thoughts and information.

Using GoogleBlog as a search engine, I found many of the predictable names in the Library 2.0 (L2) conversation: Michael Casey and Laura Savastinuk, Philip Bradley, Meredith Farkas, John Blyberg and Laura Cohen, as well as Kate Sheehan and K.G. Schneider. Paul Pival as "The Distant librarian" working in Canada and Jeff Scott, library manager in Arizon both have blogs with current posts on the topic of L2. One blog referred to another, and one site led me to more and more. So what started with GoogleBlog became a dynamic treasure hunt.

My most profitable find, though, was a blog with the combination of L2 and the academic library setting. Suzanne Chapman serves as "the interface and user testing specialist" for the University of Michigan Library's Digital Library Production Service. Her blog , UsersLib.com, site provides extensive reading in various related topics, and naturally the topic of L2 as it concerns her university library is part of her treasure.

In short, my rationale for choosing to add this blog to mine is that Suzanne is living out the dual focus of my blog: how do we implement Library 2.0 for our academic library users?

So I'm happy to direct my readers to http://userslib.com/category/library-20/ and especially to Suzanne's post from last month entitled "Data: Students + Facebook + Library Outreach." The article is "keepin' it real" by reminding us that technology alone does not an L2 make.

I posted recently about our library web survey but I thought it’d be interesting to talk a little about one particular question: If you could contact a librarian via Facebook or MySpace for help with your research, would you? If not, why?

The main impetus for this question comes from a current trend for libraries to create Facebook apps that allow OPAC searching and other library related functionality from within Facebook. There has also been a lot of discussion and experimentation with using Facebook for reference and outreach. ... Nearly half of the total respondents stated they would not be interested, but for various reasons - the biggest reason being that they feel the current methods (in-person, email, IM) are more than sufficient. 14% said no because they felt it was inappropriate or that Facebook/MySpace is a social tool, not a research tool. Though this latter category does not represent a majority, these responses were the most emphatic.

Suzanne's comments in response to the data make for interesting reading, particularly her comment on what many students have yet to understand about FaceBook and privacy. Check out her full post when you have a moment.

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What is Library 2.0?

"What makes a service Library 2.0? Any service, physical or virtual, that successfully reaches users, is evaluated frequently, and makes use of customer input is a Library 2.0 service."

from Casey, M. E., & Savastinuk, L. C. (2006, September). "Library 2.0." Library Journal,
131(14), 40-42

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