So – Talis have done quite a bit of work in this area – just a cunning marketing ploy, or a real investment in a different approach to Libraries and online technology?<\/p>\n
So – what is Library 2.0. There’s been a lot of debate about this (some of it pretty inflammatory) on the web.<\/p>\n
Paul is suggesting that Libraries are often seen as ‘worth but dull’. Library 2.0 is about libraries reaching out both online and in the physical world.<\/p>\n
Paul is starting by drawing on a couple of reports. One that OCLC recently published on ‘Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources’, and one from MORI<\/p>\n
The OCLC report showed that 96% of people surveyed visited the library, and a large number of people go online in libraries.<\/p>\n
MORI showed that 89% of people trusted libraries. They trusted libraries more than any other institution they were asked about (e.g. BBC)<\/p>\n
So – what went wrong online? Paul is illustrating the quality of library catalogues online (e.g. options to do a ‘Boolean search’ as one of the main search options). The OCLC report showed that less than 30% had visited a library website.<\/p>\n
So – if we look at ‘Web 2.0’ it is typified by the following:<\/p>\n
Relevant
\nInnovative
\nOpen
\nNimble
\nParticipative
\nSmall pieces, loosely coupled
\nUser centric
\nResponsive<\/p>\n
Paul is questioning about how many of these can be applied to libraries. Personally I think that we do actually buy into most of these concepts. I think definitely User centric, Response, Relevant and Open are things that can describe most libraries.<\/p>\n
Anyway – Paul is saying Library 2.0 is about:
\nopening the library
\npush the library everywhere
\nengage with actual and potential user communities
\ndisaggregate library systems (and bring them together)
\nshared innovation<\/p>\n
Paul is saying that most libraries spend a large amount of money every 7-10 years on a single, monolithic system that is out of date by the time it is installed. He is suggesting we should be looking smaller components, put together.<\/p>\n
Some examples of what people in the community are doing:<\/p>\n
http:\/\/www.plymouth.edu\/library\/opac<\/a> is a library catalogue as a blog (or a blog as a library catalogue). It offers comments and tagging for all books on their system.<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.daveyp.com\/blog<\/a> – a grease monkey plugin that shows ‘due back’ times for the University of Huddersfield when viewing books on Amazon.<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.aadl.org\/catalog<\/a> – online catalogue represented as traditional catalogue cards. Also allows the addition of comments from readers.<\/p>\n Paul is suggesting that we should be looking at a platform based approach – some key components.<\/p>\n Firstly the ‘Directory’. A central store of data about libraries, their collection and their locations – accessible via public web services. (http:\/\/directory.talis.com<\/a>)<\/p>\n The directory records information about libraries, and then makes it reusable by other systems.<\/p>\n A second key component is keeping track of the books: Holdings data in a common format – how many copies are there? Are they in or out?<\/p>\n In combination with the directory, it’s possible to produce a plugin to show holdings of books in many libraries while searching Amazon.<\/p>\n