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?

So – what is Library 2.0. There’s been a lot of debate about this (some of it pretty inflammatory) on the web.

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.

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

The OCLC report showed that 96% of people surveyed visited the library, and a large number of people go online in libraries.

MORI showed that 89% of people trusted libraries. They trusted libraries more than any other institution they were asked about (e.g. BBC)

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.

So – if we look at ‘Web 2.0’ it is typified by the following:

Relevant
Innovative
Open
Nimble
Participative
Small pieces, loosely coupled
User centric
Responsive

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.

Anyway – Paul is saying Library 2.0 is about:
opening the library
push the library everywhere
engage with actual and potential user communities
disaggregate library systems (and bring them together)
shared innovation

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is saying that most libraries spend a large amount of money every 7-10 years on a single, monolithic system that is out of date by the time it is installed.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.

Some examples of what people in the community are doing:

http://www.plymouth.edu/library/opac 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.

http://www.daveyp.com/blog – a grease monkey plugin that shows ‘due back’ times for the University of Huddersfield when viewing books on Amazon.

http://www.aadl.org/catalog – online catalogue represented as traditional catalogue cards. Also allows the addition of comments from readers.

Paul is suggesting that we should be looking at a platform based approach – some key components.

Firstly the ‘Directory’. A central store of data about libraries, their collection and their locations – accessible via public web services. (http://directory.talis.com)

The directory records information about libraries, and then makes it reusable by other systems.

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?

In combination with the directory, it’s possible to produce a plugin to show holdings of books in many libraries while searching Amazon.

Talis have done a demonstration of this type of technology called Whisper. It isn’t a product – it is simply a technology demonstration. Have a look at http://tdn.talis.com for links and information.

To try to encourage some of the kinds of innovation that Paul is talking about Talis has announced a ‘Mashing up the Library’ competition – to encourage this kind of development (£1000 to the winning entry).

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?

So – what is Library 2.0. There’s been a lot of debate about this (some of it pretty inflammatory) on the web.

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.

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

The OCLC report showed that 96% of people surveyed visited the library, and a large number of people go online in libraries.

MORI showed that 89% of people trusted libraries. They trusted libraries more than any other institution they were asked about (e.g. BBC)

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.

So – if we look at ‘Web 2.0’ it is typified by the following:

Relevant
Innovative
Open
Nimble
Participative
Small pieces, loosely coupled
User centric
Responsive

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.

Anyway – Paul is saying Library 2.0 is about:
opening the library
push the library everywhere
engage with actual and potential user communities
disaggregate library systems (and bring them together)
shared innovation

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.

Some examples of what people in the community are doing:

http://www.plymouth.edu/library/opac 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.

http://www.daveyp.com/blog – a grease monkey plugin that shows ‘due back’ times for the University of Huddersfield when viewing books on Amazon.

http://www.aadl.org/catalog – online catalogue represented as traditional catalogue cards. Also allows the addition of comments from readers.

Paul is suggesting that we should be looking at a platform based approach – some key components.

Firstly the ‘Directory’. A central store of data about libraries, their collection and their locations – accessible via public web services. (http://directory.talis.com)

The directory records information about libraries, and then makes it reusable by other systems.

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?

In combination with the directory, it’s possible to produce a plugin to show holdings of books in many libraries while searching Amazon.

Talis have done a demonstration of this type of technology called Whisper. It isn’t a product – it is simply a technology demonstration. Have a look at http://tdn.talis.com for links and information.

To try to encourage some of the kinds of innovation that Paul is talking about Talis has announced a ‘Mashing up the Library’ competition – to encourage this kind of development (£1000 to the winning entry).