Trip Report: ASpB Conference 2007

ASpB is the acronym for "Arbeitsgemeinschaft Spezialbibliotheken", an association of about 1000 special libraries in German-speaking countries. A range of MPS librarians visit the ASpB conferences which is organized every two years by its association. Nicole and Inga attended the 2007 ASpB conference on Wednesday, 26.9.2007. Please find our impressions and references below.

=Session 4 - Web 2.0 and Social Software: a test of the usage possibilities=

Special Library 2.0 - documentation of an experiment
The talk was given by Lambert Heller, FU Berlin and Annekathrin Genest, Polnisches Institut, Berlin.

German abstract of the talk: http://www.ub.tu-berlin.de/fileadmin/user_upload/documents/ASpB/Abstracts/4_Heller.pdf

Summary
Lambert Heller and Annekathrin Genest reported about the web 2.0 tools, they have tested for the Dokumentationszentrum NS-Zwangsarbeit in Schöneweide.

Tools they tested:
 * LibraryThing (social cataloguing web application for storing and sharing personal library catalogs and book lists)
 * BibSonomy (social bookmarking and publication sharing system)
 * Page Flakes (platform, where you can integrate on one or several pages small, movable versions of all webpages you would like to bundle)

Idea: Make an account as Library in the system and put the content of the library in web 2.0 tools, so that the content and the library is more visible and the possibility to tag the content.

Goal of the test:
 * bring the information of the library into the environment of the user
 * enlarge the visibility of the content provided by the library (PR for free)
 * network effect, because of big amount of data

Outcome:
 * Test it yourself and experiment with web 2.0 tools!

Subject indexing by users: results of a test with the internet resources of the Virtuelle Fachbibliothek Econbiz
The talk was given by Jan Lüth, Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften Kiel - ZBW.

German abstract of the talk: http://www.ub.tu-berlin.de/fileadmin/user_upload/documents/ASpB/Abstracts/4_Lueth.pdf

Links from the talk:
 * http://www.econbiz.de
 * http://www.econbiz.de/internetquellen/
 * http://www.academic-linkshare.de/verbund/
 * http://del.icio.us (social bookmarking)
 * http://www.furl.net
 * http://www.mister-wong.de (german socail bookmarking)

Summary
Put Links and tags form their bookmarking solution "academic link share" on del.icio.us and mister-wong to see how often the Links would be also bookmarked and if the tags by the specialists would also be used by the community.

Experience they made with del.icio.us:
 * the tags from their system where mainly used, if no tags where existing for a certain bookmark yet
 * 23,3% of the links (incl. tags) where used by del.icio.us users
 * special topics are not often bookmarked and tagged
 * the tags from "academic link share" are not visible in the "crowd" of tags

Experience they made with mister-wong:
 * no high usage of their links, maybe because the community is mainly German ??? and the user community in mister-wong is not the target group of them (scientist might use other systems more than mister-wong)

Weblogs as steering tool in academic libraries
The talk was given by Christine Krätzsch, Universitätsbibliothek Mannheim.

German abstract of the talk: http://www.ub.tu-berlin.de/fileadmin/user_upload/documents/ASpB/Abstracts/4_Kraetzsch.pdf

Summary
In the library of the University of Mannheim they implemented a news blog and the possibility to write reviews in the library OPAC on books etc. provided in the OPAC.

Reviews in the OPAC:
 * only users from the university library can create reviews
 * the name of the user, who made the entry is not visible, but the faculty and the status (student, prof., etc.)
 * 402 reviews have been entered so far and most of them where positive
 * the reviews are also made available via the news blog

News blog:
 * Is about news in the library. New books, opening times etc.
 * The blog is moderated. Only comments and entries, which where authorized by the library get visible.
 * If there is a strong request, e.g. for longer opening times or so, the library tries to full fill the wish or tries to give a reasonable answer.

Outcome:
 * the blog is heavily being used, mainly for criticism
 * users of the blog help each other
 * dedicated support and sensitiveness is needed from the librarians, being ready to lead an open discussion and being able to accept criticism
 * not all topics are made for being discussed on a blog
 * blog has to be filled with life