Recently I was asked if some software applications I was involved in were Web 2.0 compliant. This was amusing and distressing on so many levels. It’s amusing because what is being called Web 2.0 isn’t a “standard” in almost any sense of the word. It’s distressing because it shows how quickly a conversation becomes an expectation in today’s world. This is a perfect example of the power of the 95 Theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto. You can remind yourself about these at http://www.cluetrain.com/. The major thesis to me is number one – “Markets are conversations.”

Anyway, I thought it might be useful to devote this month’s column to a little information on Web 2.0 and its newborn babies, Library 2.0 and Librarian 2.0. And why should you read this column? You’ve heard it all before, but in a few years these Web. 2.0 conversations have the power to drive huge transformations in our media landscape and, therefore, our life, work, and play environments. Sigh. As I’ve noted on my blog, we are entering a period of enormous change – far greater than what we’ve ever experienced in our lives to date. Both the Gartner Group and Morgan Stanley have noted that this will be transformational on a very global scale. It’ll be exciting too, although those of us who care about communities, learning, and information will be tasked with some pretty heavy strategic planning goals.

Web 2.0

According to some sources, the term Web 2.0 has been around since about October 2004. From Wikipedia, the free Web encyclopedia (gotta love the price), it is defined as:

Web 2.0 is a term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications to end users. Ultimately Web 2.0 services are expected to replace desktop computing applications for many purposes.

I think Web 2.0 goes much further than this, actually beyond an application focus. It’s really about the “hot” Web. I am talking here about “hot” in the McLuhanesque sense of the hot and cold or warm and cool aspects of technology. What makes the Web warmer or hotter? Interactivity. Of course the Web is already interactive in a cooler sense. You can click and get results. You can send email and get responses. You can go to Web sites and surf. The old World Wide Web was based on the "Web 1.0" paradigm of Web sites, email, search engines, and surfing. Web 2.0 is about the more human aspects of interactivity. It’s about conversations, interpersonal networking, personalization, and individualism. In the library world this has relevance not just to our public Web portals but also to workplace intranets and the imperative for greater social cohesiveness in virtual teams and global content engagement. Plain intranets and plain Web sites are fast becoming old stuff – just so last century. The emerging modern user needs the experience of the Web, and not just content, to learn and succeed. We can see some of these modalities emerging in the gaming environment. Context is the word of the day here. Such technologies as are listed below serve as the emerging foundation for Web. 2.0:

·         RSS (really simple syndication)

·         Wikis

·         New and revised programming methods like AJAX and APIs

·         Blogs and blogging

·         Commentary and comments functionality

·         Personalization and “My Profile” features

·         Personal media such as Podcasting and MP3 files

·         Streaming media audio and video formats

·         Reviews and user driven ratings

·         Personalized Alerts

·         Web Services

·         Instant messaging and virtual reference including co-browsing

·         Folksonomies, Tagging, and tag clouds

·         Photos (e.g. Flickr, Picasa)

·         Social networking software

·         Open Access, Open Source, Open Content

·         Socially driven content

·         Social bookmarking (such as Delic.io.us)

The technology infrastructure of Web 2.0 is complex, constantly in flux, and really in a Renaissance mode. It includes server software, content syndication, messaging protocols, standards-based browsers, and various client applications.

This is fundamentally about a transition of the Web site and email-centric world from one that is mostly about information (and largely textual information) to one where the content is combined with functionality and targeted applications. Web 2.0 could be seen as the Web becoming a computing platform for serving up Web applications to end users, but I believe that this is a too geek-centric point of view. It’s primarily about a much higher level of interactivity and deeper user experiences, which are enabled by the recent advances in Web software combined with insights into the transformational aspects of the Internet. Web 2.0 is ultimately about a social phenomenon - not just about networked social experiences but about the distribution and creation of Web content itself, “characterized by open communication, decentralization of authority, freedom to share and reuse, and the market as a conversation.” To enable this new world, we will see a more organized Web with a plethora of new modalities of categorized content, more developed deep-linking Web architecture, and a greater variety of Web display modes like visualization. Ultimately this will result in another shift in economic value of the Web, potentially equaling that of the dotcom boom, and probably driving an even higher level of social, political, institutional, and economic disruption.

What is truly exciting is that Web 2.0 is just the title of a conversation. There is no standard (at least not just a single one). We can all participate and influence the development of the next generation of the Web. To the detail oriented, this conversation may be too high in the stratosphere without enough concrete recommendations, and to the theoretically inclined, it may remain too visionary for real implementation. Among all of us, it is worth following. Web 2.0 is probably the series title of the most important conversation of our age - and one whose impacts can be truly transformational on a global scale.

Web 3.0

There is even discussion and dreaming about a “Web 3.0.” One could speculate that the Google / Sun Microsystems alliance to create a Web-based operating system for applications like word processing and spreadsheets is an early indicator of this trend. Perhaps it will look something like the Croquet Project, which is very exciting and worth looking at reviewing as a potential scenario of what Web 3.0 might look like. Web 3.0 will probably be even more distributed in form than Web 2.0, and maybe some of the Web 2.0 applications will disappear or merge with a new integrated whole. Web Services or the emerging semantic Web may replace such things as social networking sites and repositories.


Library 2.0

In the library and information professional world, I believe that we generally deal with a savvier audience of users relative to the general consumer. We also tend to the digital divide issues of the more challenged user. This means that what our most critical users don’t know about or use, we can often inform them about and train them in the newest technologies that can have an impact on their success. For those users that can quickly become comfortable using technologies such as Wikis, RSS, instant messaging, news aggregators and blogs, we can help them to leverage these in making a difference in reaching their goals and your institutional or enterprise goals. For those libraries that block access to the newest applications, they are positioning their technological presence as one which is poor. This is not a good position to take as a bridge in the digital divide for their communities.

Clearly, every one of the technologies listed in Web 2.0 above – RSS, Wikis, blogging, personalization, podcasting, streaming media, ratings, alerts, folksonomies, tagging, social networking software, and the rest – could be useful in an enterprise, institutional, or community environment and could be driven or introduced by the library. Yes, I know that many of these are already used individually in many of your environments. The beauty of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 is the level of integration and interoperability that is designed into the interface through your portal or intranet. That’s where the real power to enhance the user experience is. In order to take advantage of the concepts inherent in Library 2.0 is the imperative to not shy away from adding advanced functionality and features directly into the content. This would provide the context and workflow-oriented features that users will demand or are demanding already. Recently there has been a blog-based discussion about the need for renewed functionality in the ILS (integrated library system) and the OPAC.

 

John Blyberg, at Ann Arbor District Library, has promulgated an ILS Customer Bill of Rights, which asks for four things:

1. Open, read-only, direct access to the database
2. A full-blown, W3C standards-based API to all read-write functions
3. The option to run the ILS on hardware of our choosing, on servers that we administer
4. High security standards

 

Many of the requested aspects of Library 2.0 are already available in the SirsiDynix ILS interfaces for those who choose to update to current versions. SirsiDynix systems (Unicorn and Horizon) are well prepared to adapt to the 2.0 world. SirsiDynix has for many years offered open and allowed read-only, direct access to the database.

 

SirsiDynix systems (Unicorn and Horizon) have a library of APIs, and we have offered API training for years for any client to write anything they can imagine or for which they need customization for their particular environment. Loads of our clients do APIs, and they share APIs among themselves all the time and present them to each other at the user group meetings and big CODI and SuperConferences. It's not full blown W3C compliant yet, but we will be after the standard gets out there more fully.

 

SirsiDynix allows clients to use the hardware of their choosing, on servers that clients administer. Of course, there is no such thing as open hardware (yet?), but we try not to straightjacket our clients too much. We have always encouraged our customers to choose their own hardware within the specifications we have tested. We can't promise the software will work on everything – especially those platforms and hardware we haven't tested, but we're pretty flexible. We do offer hosted solutions especially for those smaller libraries that don't have the internal systems expertise. It’s a useful option.

 

Lastly, we have pretty high security standards, but we don't think they're high enough, especially in today’s challenging systems environments. Horizon 8.0 and Corinthian will be released in 2006 and have much higher security and two-way encryption standards. Unicorn 3.X has plans to implement higher security options as well.

 

While this list is largely focused on the systems librarian’s needs, it does provide a foundation for Library 2.0 for end-users as long as we have Librarian 2.0 in place.

 

SirsiDynix also has the 2.0 foundation being developed. Both the Enterprise Portal Solution™ (EPS) and the Horizon Information Portal (HIP) were developed to allow both specialized proprietary solutions and open source or free applications to be integrated into the interfaces, portals, and portlets. These are the beginnings of the next generation of interfaces to move beyond the OPAC and integrate our content and tools into the overall information ecologies of communities and learning.

 

On the content side of the house, SirsiDynix’s Rooms™ production and tools provide the opportunity to create and deliver content in context. You can also integrate many useful applications into the Room that empowers the user and places the librarian into the virtual learning and discovery space. The launch of School Rooms™ is a transformational approach to the world of schools, homework, and learning.

Librarian 2.0

Librarian 2.0 is the guru of the information age. Librarian 2.0 strives to

·         Understand the power of the Web 2.0 opportunities

·         Learn the major tools of Web 2.0 and Library 2.0

·         Combine e-resources and print formats and is container and format agnostic

·         Is device independent and uses and delivers to everything from laptops to PDAs to iPods

·         Develop targeted federated search and adopts the OpenURL standard

·         Connect people and technology and information in context

·         Doesn’t shy away from non-traditional cataloging and classification and chooses tagging, tag clouds, folksonomies, and user-driven content descriptions and classifications where appropriate

·         Embrace non-textual information and the power of pictures, moving images, sight, and sound

·         Understand the “long tail” and leverages the power of old and new content

·         See the potential in using content sources like the Open Content Alliance, Google Print, and Open WorldCat

·         Connect users to expert discussions, conversations, and communities of practice and participates there as well

·         Use the latest tools of communication (such as Skype) to connect content, expertise, information coaching, and people

·         Use and develops advanced social networks to enterprise advantage

·         Connect with everyone using their communication mode of choice – telephone, Skype, IM, SMS, texting, email, virtual reference, etc.

·         Encourage user driven metadata and user developed content and commentary

·         Understand the wisdom of crowds and the emerging roles and impacts of the blogosphere, Web syndicasphere and wikisphere

First and foremost, Librarian 2.0 understands his or her users at a deep level – not just as pointers and clickers. Librarian 2.0 understands end users deeply in terms of their goals and aspirations, workflows, social and content needs, and more. Librarian 2.0 is where the user is, when the user is there. This is an immersion environment that librarians are eminently qualified to contribute to. Aspects of librarian influenced e-learning and distance education as implemented by our institutions and communities should allow us to contribute to the preparation of our users to acquire and improve their skills and competencies.

It is essential that we start preparing to become Librarian 2.0 now. The Web 2.0 movement is laying the groundwork for exponential business growth and another major shift in the way our users live, work, and play. We have the ability, insight, and knowledge to influence the creation of this new dynamic – and guarantee the future of our profession. Librarian 2.0 – now.

 

Stephen Abram, MLS is vice president, Innovation for SirsiDynix. He is an SLA Fellow and the past president of the Ontario Library Association and the immediate past president of the Canadian Library Association. In June 2003 he was awarded SLA’s John Cotton Dana Award. Stephen would love to hear from you at stephen.abram@sirsidynix.com.