Library 2.0 without a developer

A few months ago I started working as the systems bod in a Library with big Library 2.0 ambitions. Staff had been coming back from conferences with heads full of blogs and wikis and RSS and the notion that This Is What We Should Be Doing, and I inherited a strategic plan full of such things.

Now, not a single other member of staff even uses these technologies as a consumer. So the first thing I did was get them to download an RSS reader and point them towards some useful feeds. I'm now turning to the issue of content creation, and as I see it I have two problems:

1. I don't have a software developer on the staff. I'm not a scripter, I wouldn't know one end of PHP from the other (despite it being a palindrome), and no-one else in the organisation does. Our very basic website is hosted off-site by a content management company who aren't up to doing complicated things. They like to put XHTML compliance certs on pages that aren't, for instance. I don't trust them.

2. We are a private library and don't like to share. Or rather, our members (whose fees pay for our existence) don't. It sucks, but anything we create will have to sit behind an authentication system to ensure only our members can read and use it. I've no problem with putting stuff on the hidden web that is linked to from the Members' Section of the site (RSS, for instance) but I fear employing things like Blogger or a free wiki host in case they get indexed by search engines and are found by The Great Unwashed With Whom We Do Not Share Information.

Am I screwed? Do have to wait until someone listens to me and hires an applications developer with his own web server? Or is there any way I can do fun, cool and private stuff for my readers?

It's too bad we didn't have a beer when I was in Ireland last month (for a month!).

Is your OPAC on the public web?

What do you want to do? I find a lot of this "Lib2.0" talk unfocused. Okay, so there *exist* blogs and wikis and so forth. Now, what are you going to do with them. I'm not—frankly—convinced libraries have any paricular reason to use some of this stuff. (Libraries that Twitter? Why?) But I do believe in opening up the catalog in interesting ways, and engaging your patrons in some social networking around the library.

How about Ning? That might be cool. And it can be private.

T

Yes, I noticed from Twitter you were over (expecting decent broadband in the Sligo Clarion: awww, bless!) but didn't see anything in the blogs about what you were up to.

Anyhoo, our OPAC is on the hidden web, and we make the users log in to our site and then link out to it. They probably wouldn't like it if we told them that they (and anyone) can go direct if they know the URL. The point is it's not for sharing. I'm looking at doing some of our current awareness stuff from the catalogue as RSS, but I'm definitely interested in other ways to use it. When I see other users of the same LMS doing fun things with their catalogue, there's usually some Perl behind it, and that puts it out of my reach. For now.

As to what else I want to do: I've already created something that looks a bit like a blog on the website that might fool the casual observer, but there's no archiving, comments, feeds, trackback or any of the other things that make blogs properly useful. I'd like a fully-functioning blog that will sit somewhere hidden. Actually, I'd like several. I see them primarily as marketing tools: ways of keeping the members up to speed with our various projects, warning them of what's on the horizon, getting their opinions back, and *getting them to interact with each other's opinions*. At the moment we don't even have a way of contacting all members with a single e-mail, since many use ever-changing private ones: blogs will act as a virtual noticeboard, with scribble space and a pen on a string.

All of our 2000 members are in the same line of specialised work and a wiki would be great for them to debate practice and share resources, and great for us as a service-provider to them, and to the office in charge of their professional development. If I started that ball rolling I'm fairly sure people would jump in behind me. But where do I push?

I hadn't heard of Ning, and thanks for pointing it out, but it seems to require users to create a new ID to use a private network. I think that any Library 2.0 strategy we implement will have to be something that the casual reader can read casually, and benefit from; but equally that the enthusiast can get involved with and add value to. No matter how good a marketing job I do on a service, if the first thing someone sees when they click on to it is a sign-up box (even one as well thought-out as LT's), they won't come back. They already complain about having too many IDs and passwords (we don't even do proxy authentication for our subscription databases yet): I don't want to give them another one.

Phew. This is getting really whiney, but even writing it down helps me figure out what I'm trying to do and what I'm up against. Any more ideas, resources, or problems with my approach are very welcome.

I'd need to think about this a lot more as I've got a lot of ideas about Lib2.0 from a user's perspective ("Why am I interested?"), but they're still a tad ephemeral and then I made the mistake of moving back into IT ...

However, quite a lot of the programs that make "2.0 concepts" available to users can be privately hosted, and from what I understand programming is not required. A certain amount of IT-savviness, yes, but not programming.

I wrote a concept training document on explaining 2.0 to the average health/medical library user and put a version in this blogpost (http://hlis.wordpress.com/2007/04/18/20-in-a-users-context/). I'm linking to the whole post as a sideways sort-of-a-not-answer to Tim Spalding, above :).

From my perspective, training users on 2.0 is a complete waste of time. They're not interested in concepts. They're interested in concrete, "how will this make my life better?" stuff. Me, I love concepts; but I have to train users.

When I thought about it, the essence of 2.0 to me was "current awareness", always vital in a health/medical context. For me and my users, the inconnected web offers unparalled opportunities to find out what's happening. It combines with well-known technologies like auto-alerts and tables of contents to either improve those options, or open up entirely new ways of finding new stuff as painlessly as possible.

In your case, I would be starting with familar concepts like "news" or "keeping up-to-date" or suchlike. Don't use the word "wiki" because really, it's just a user-editable website and if you don't have a need for such a thing, it's not worth jumping on the bandwagon. RSS feeds are, I suspect, going to be your path to 2.0 in this audience but you might need to incorporate them into your own website first, before getting people to set their own up.

See what sort of local IT resources you can get for downloading, installing, and playing with social software first - stuff you can play with behind the firewall. Start investigating "virtual reference" (which to many, is simply sending and filling reference requests via email, but goes all the way up to IM and beyond); stuff that value-adds your existing library services to your users.

From virtual reference you can gently lead into blogs and commentaries; from current awareness you can lead into RSS feeds; from "what's new" you can lead into wikis and blogs and actual information sharing.

But with all this, I strongly recommend never using the term "2.0". Until one day someone walks in and sees your users requesting services via IM, responding to the latest news with more resources for others to play with, and contributing to a Wiki-based knowledge base.

THEN you can say "Look at our library 2.0 service!!!" :)

- infoaddict

I'm sideways-avoiding looking at that (2:30am, what can I say?) but I think cutting the "users" (ie., regular people) about of Lib2.0 is a fatal error. These are diffuse concepts, but, well the MSM is about "staying current" too.

Hi Infoaddict, thanks for the response.

I absolutely agree with you about the users' perspective in this: I have no intention of training users to use any new service, nor will I be branding anything as part of a "Library 2.0 initiative", because they couldn't give a monkeys what the current release version of libraries is. Nor could the higher-ups who decide whether or not my job continues to exist or not.

Current awareness and virtual reference is definitely where I'll be starting, and have put the groundwork in on RSS and IM. No problem.

But where the real value lies here is in getting the punters talking to each other inside the Library space. Once upon a time they all worked off of benches in a big hall where they (and the Library staff) could chat in a quiet corner, yell arguments across the room, stick notices up on a board, hand out flyers or leave notes on each other's chairs. I want to build a web-based version of that.

Of the social software for behind the firewall, can you name me some names?

>6 TheBeerNut: You mention ..the firewall. What are your capabilties and constraints? Can you pull information in from outside (using RSS feeds) and add it to local web pages using javascript? Do you have some software that can be adapted?

I'm investigating similar solutions for an assignment at my own workplace. So far I've come up with Bloglines, Google Notebook, and Diigo. Each offers some service for RSS, collaboration, and, except Bloglines, shared bookmarking. In addition, many of our database vendors are offering RSS feeds for predetermined searches.

leave notes on each other's chairs. I want to build a web-based version of that Diigo might be a help there. It offers the option to keep the account (perhaps a shared login/password) private. And users can annotate and share comments on linked webpages.

I agree that relevance is the key. Make it worthwhile and useful, the technology as transparent as possible.

Yes, pulling stuff in from outside is definitely an option, and there are a few sites in the relevant subject area that might be useful. Javascript, however, is beyond me. Is it one of those things one can pick up? The whole thing about adapting software pushes this into the realm of the developer and out of my reach.

Diigo is very interesting. Shame about the login and password though: it removes any useful transparency from the technology. If it was possible for the users (and only the users) to see the annotations and only log-in if they wanted to add to them, that'd be great. But I think I've left the realms of the possible behind at this point.

Sounds like what you really want is a forum, and that's "old technology" :). A bulletin board, in short. PHPbb is, from all accounts, easy to install and setup for even the non-programmers, and readily customisable. More importantly, while it's accessed via a web interface, it's a stand-alone package that can be installed on your own local computers and hence kept completely private. You can also add plugins for wikis and blogs.

I only know about the latter because of one of the forums I frequent - bushfood.net (it's about native Australian produce; harmless for work). On the left are links to a Wiki and blogs. I'm afraid I don't know the technicalities of how they were added in, but can point you to the person who did if you want to ask questions.

There are other combined packages - some free, some low-cost, and some very expensive - that will deliver all sorts of goodies and toys to your users, without any requirements to go out to the 'net. The first question, however, is what sort of control do you have over your local technology? Can you install what you like? Or do you have to fight with another department for permissions?

Six Apart (http://www.sixapart.com/) is the name behind the rather good free blogging software Typepad (typepad.com). They have a standalone package for setting up in-house blogs - Moveable Type. Note this is blogs only, not bulletin board/forum software.

I'll try to think of/research a few more names that could be of use to you!

Thanks Infoaddict. I'm a member of something similar myself (irishcraftbrewer.com) so have the ear of someone who has a clue what they're doing. I'm a bit wary at the moment about FTPing the software onto our hosting company's server, but I reckon this is where I'll start as soon as I get some dedicated hosting space of my own.

Yes, of course it's old technology, but the lesson I'm taking from this thread is that it's not the technology that counts, it's what you do with it.

"Yes, of course it's old technology, but the lesson I'm taking from this thread is that it's not the technology that counts, it's what you do with it."

That's exactly why I put a smiley after my phrase - there's a certain irony in suggesting a "mere" forum in a post about Web2.0. The thing is that people seem to have forgotten, or never realised, that this whole intraconnection of the web has been going on for a LONG time; everyone's taking about social networking over the 'net as if it's something new, when in fact it's the very thing that's driven the free 'net when other, more constrained services (remember Apple's .. what was it? OneWorld?? Can't remember) died through lack of interest. It's the reason that SMS took off when everyone expected web-over-mobile would be the Next Big Thing - when you come right down to it, people like talking to other people. They _say_ they want information but in reality, they want to exchange snappy one-liners with a complete stranger.

Sez you! ;)

oops! :(

*grin* 'zactly!! :)