Sheila WebberDepartment of Information StudiesUniversity of SheffieldSeptember 2008

Potential and issues of Web 2.0

Themes

• General issues• Potential and issues for

– Educators– Learners– Librarians

• x Different types of Web 2.0 application

http://www.netvibes.com/sheilawebber

http://librarianbydesign.blogspot.com

http://www.slideshare.net/Second Life

http://delicious.com/

SLEDcc 2008 Flickr pool

General issues• Deciding (when) to go outside the organisation• Legal issues• Privacy and respect• Finding the appropriate use for each application• Time• Educating yourself and others (inc. learners) to

use them• Leveraging enthusiasts without exploitation or

dependency• Technology & accessibility• Keeping up & learning new skills• Mobile everything

Blogs in education: useful for

Reflecting on

Communicating

Recording

Publishing

Developing

Progress

Projects

Ideas

Assignments

Learning

• Library blogs– To support & create community– To support & manage activities and tasks– To communicate & create relationships with

customers– To support educational goals

• Blogs and learners– When used personally – may be more like social

networking– Academic blogging - and reading information blogs –

may be skills needing development

Wikis

• Librarians – internal management, projects; sharing knowledge with customers and other libraries

• Educators – developing understanding, sharing ideas, working out the shape of a subject

• Learners – mostly consumers of wikis?• Issues: level of control, organisation of

wiki, getting people to contributeExample: http://www.libraryforlife.org/subjectguides/index.php/Main_Page

*

Social networking

• Focused on personal profiles e.g. Facebook

• Focused on a community e.g. Ning• Focused on collecting and displaying

content e.g. Netvibes

Exampleshttp://www.netvibes.com/cmb#CMB_Toolboxhttp://www.netvibes.com/ilk21#General

• Librarians– Things to put on people’s pages

(library catalogue widgets etc.)– Pages with things on– Interaction between functions (group/discussion

board/ individuals etc)• Educators - Focus for tasks, class material,

socialisation, marketing• Learners – may have to leave it up to them to

take initiative with personal profile services like Facebook?

Examples:http://liv.ac.uk/library/web_apps.htmlhttp://www.pageflakes.com/scharrlib/24245842

Microblogging

Twittering the conference

Twittering the library

Examples: NPCLibrary; houstonlibrary; helenalex

“This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken

together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of

your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist

painting.” (Thompson, 2008)

?

Listing/sharing

• Overload• Targetting• Motivation• Retrieval• Comments – social

or irrelevant?

http://www.slideshare.net/cilass.slideshare/jamie-wood-some-delicious-blogging-for-ibl-may-2008-presentation/

Virtual worlds• More complex experience and possibilities• Virtual worlds with different populations and

functions• Technical barriers can be high (kit/connection)• Librarian’s role evolving • Gen Club Penguin may be more into it• Like social networking, may have moral stigma• Generation V

Virtual worlds• Librarian’s role evolving: Reference?

Links? Consultant? Educator? With or without a library? Good for networking

• Educators: Wide possibilities• Learners

– Both enthusiasm and boredom (but may reflect teaching!)

– Gen Club Penguin may be more into it• Generation V …

“as more baby boomers (who are living longer) and the younger generations go

online and participate/communicate in a flat virtual environment, the generational

distinctions break down. Customers will hop across segments at various times of life for

various reasons and are likely to act like several generations at any given time.”

http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=545108

• Avoidingchannel overload

• Channel choice• Balance tech/

personal• Balance control/

creativity• Weaving and linking

“The problems arise when dependence completely on the tech starts to take over... 'virtual learning' could become just that, with no interaction between student and facilitator other than the technological interface... also, while computer ownership is abundant, there are some who are still technologically 'poor' or dependent on the facilities provided through the Uni, and we all know what that means!” (Karen)http://edu-informatics.livejournal.com/16.02.07

Bringing it together

http://adventuresofyoshikawa.blogspot.com/

Sheila Yoshikawa

Powerpoint at: http://www.slideshare.net/sheilawebber/

Sheila Webber s.webber@shef.ac.uk http://information-

literacy.blogspot.com/

Reference• Thompson, C. (2008) “I’m so totally, digitally

close to you.” New York Times, 7 September. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/magazine/07awareness-t.html?ex=1378440000&en=b87f67f56fa2fbe2&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Further items• Fisher, J. and Smith, S. (2007) “To PB or not

PB: making wikis work for your library.”SCONUL focus, (42), 44-45. http://www.sconul.ac.uk/publications/newsletter/42/

• Secker, Jane (2008), Libraries, social software and distance learners: final literature review, February 2008, available at http://clt.lse.ac.uk/Projects/LASSIE_lit_review_final.pdf