Trip Report: Web 2.0 Workshop for Librarians

The workshop Web 2.0-Anwendungen für Bibliothekare was held on september 6/7 at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig. Please check the workshop homepage for detailed information and presentations (in German).

Three main presentations and some field reports from inside the MPS have been given:

Jakob Voss: Introduction to web 2.0 services
After a short overview on internet history and a definition of the term web2.0, Jakob illustrated the basic trends and principles of web2.0: Precondition are
 * 1) architecture: from a monolith infrastructure to a network of simple building blocks (technologies: rss, ajax, etc.)
 * 2) cooperation & collaboration: from consuming to participating ("mitmachweb")
 * 3) dynamic development of products: perpetual beta
 * 4) diversification: the long tail found an home
 * 5) decentralizing:  mash-ups (= combining data from various resources, e.g. Google maps), p2p, apis
 * open data to be copied, modified, extended, etc.
 * open interfaces (apis) to provide machines and software access to the data

Following web2.0 applications have been presented:
 * youtube - as an service to share videos and social networking, e.g. to comment videos, see Web 2.0: The Machine is Us/ing Us
 * Twitter - SMS2.0 (aargh!)
 * Blogging - as a communication medium, for
 * a community, e.g. netbib log (library blog, in German),
 * an individual, e.g. the blog of Jakob Voss, or
 * an institution, e.g. MPI test blog ;)
 * CiteULike - as an example for social reference management, i.e. collaborating on sharing and maintaining references to scientific literature.
 * Library Thing - online book shelfs with community features

Anne Christensen: Library catalog 2.0
After making the point that web2.0 already started to change the expectations of users regarding library services, Anne collected ideas for library2.0, e.g. tagging, structured data, community tools and mash-ups.
 * Working assumption: Library catalog 2.0 isn't a pure presentation of bibliographic data, but connecting resources with users.
 * First examples are collected in http://wiki.netbib.de/coma/Katalog2.0
 * New catalog2.0 project in Hamburg: Beluga, see blog posting in netbib. Beluga will use search engine technologies and try to integrate reference databases and link resolvers. Challenges: usability, bibliographic data formats, how to obtain the "critical mass".

Sebastian Schneemann: Privacy and data security in the web 2.0 area
New web2.0 services, especially the collaborative applications, might be a threat to users' privacy - even though the data has been given away voluntarily. Sebastian pointed to some big "data collectors", possible consequences and asks all internet users to use their brains!

web2.0 experiences - so far?

 * Ursula Flitner and Stefan Rall: Setting up an RSS feed for toc service
 * Julia Ducke: Library work supported by a wiki
 * Britta Schneemann: Various tools developed at MIS, i.e. the fantastic show on map service

And now?
Questions raised
 * what can libraries learn from web2.0? offering tools for social networking? open up their data?
 * collaborating - but only in restricted boundaries?

Ideas gathered
 * providing screen casts to provide low-barrier starting points? e.g. setting up a vLib predefined set in 5 minutes...

Further links and resources:
 * Collaboration platform for the MPG library community
 * Robert's blog posting, see http://xrotwang.wordpress.com/2007/09/09/web-20-in-the-library/