Library 2.0h no, not him again…
I’ve just spent an extremely useful morning in the Friary Learning Centre at Lincoln College, talking to learning centre staff about “Practical Library 2.0“.
I was very pleased to have been invited to talk to colleagues there, and to give a demo (entitled “Library 2.0h no, not again…“) of how library workers can use [mostly] free tools and technologies to create useful, practical enhancements to their catalogues, web pages, and services.
As an aside, I gave a similar talk/demo last week as a guest at the meeting of LiSN (the Lincolnshire Information Services Network), a knowledge-sharing group of library workers representing most of the university, college, public, and specialist libraries in Lincolnshire.
Below is a list of some of the tools I used in my demo: this is my fundamental Library 2.0 toolkit as it stands… what else would you add?
1. RSS 
Surely RSS is the one web standard / technology (and the one Web 2.0 acronym – whatever it’s been decided that ‘RSS’ actually stands for this week) that all library workers should be encouraged to get to grips with as early as possible? It underpins just about everything else in this list, and yet it still seems to be a tool that’s only partially appreciated at best.
Anyway, here’s a video introduction to RSS (from TeacherTube) which is as good as any other I’ve found…
2. Google Reader (reader.google.com)
What can I say? It’s the first thing I check when I log on: before my email, before MyFaceTwitSpaceBook / whatever, and it’s usually the last thing I look at before I go home. I was sceptical about it before I signed up (in my ignorance), but it’s fundamentally changed the way I use the Web, very much for the better.
I didn’t even have time this morning to talk about Google Alerts, or about using Google Reader as a feed ‘blender’. Or the fact that there are plenty of other feed readers out there, and – who knows? – there may be one even better than Google Reader.
3. WordPress (wordpress.org)
We use the WordPress μ (mu = multi-user) free, open-source blogging and web publishing platform at the University of Lincoln (see: blogs.library.lincoln.ac.uk for a selection of our Library blogs).
4. Feed2JS (www.feed2js.org)
A great tool for turning any valid RSS feed into a bit of code that can be embedded in any web page (as long as you have the keys to edit the page!). You can use the centrally-hosted service at feed2js.org, or you can install it as a service on your own site (which can help to make it faster).
5. Delicious (delicious.com, although I prefer their ‘old’ URL of del.icio.us)
Social bookmarking plus tagging = exploiting the “wisdom of the crowd” to find the gems in an increasingly sprawling, confused World Wide Web. And a delicious list can be exported as an RSS feed and embedded into a page (using feed2js, above): I think it’s probably the easiest way of maintaining a list of useful web links for a subject, requiring close to zero web design expertise or effort.
6. CiteULike (www.citeulike.org)
This is a relatively new site to me; probably because I’ve been concentrating on developing and promoting RefWorks at the University I haven’t had a lot of time to explore free alternative reference managers. CiteULike doesn’t seem to be as fully-featured as RefWorks, but the interface is a lot cleaner, and it’s got RSS feeds in one click. Verdict: bears further investigation.
Bibliographic / reference management + RSS = the future of libraries, no?
7. LibraryThing (www.librarything.com)
I don’t know why all librarians aren’t on here. I like this and this and this and this and this and this and this.
And this (books from my personal wishlist):
8. University of Huddersfield Library Catalogue (webcat.hud.ac.uk)
The birth of the 2.0PAC, going on in the Wild West (Riding) as you sleep.
9. Mashed Library (mashedlibrary.ning.com)
I’m very much looking forward to next Tuesday…
