web 2.0

2007 ALA Annual Conference Session

Meredith Farkas: Capture what you and your patrons know!

Ms. Farkas is the Distance Learning Librarian at Norwich University library in Northfield, Vermont. Her remarks focused on using technology to capture and manage knowledge and information. Her full presentation is available at Meredithfarkas.wetpaint.com

She stressed the importance of knowledge management and the need to leverage the knowledge, expertise and interests of your staff and patrons. How do organizations capture and share information? One-on-one? Email? IM? Twitter? On scraps of paper? How do libraries collect information from patrons? Do libraries engage their patrons by allowing them to add content to their catalogs? Tagging? Recommendations? Rankings?

She recommended a number of libraries and projects networks to consider:

• Hennepin County Library's Bookspace, a patron-driven reader's advisory service. Patrons are able to login and create personal book lists with annotations as well as add comments to items in the catalog.
• AADL Catalog of the Ann Arbor District Library for its innovations.
• World Cat, which is introducing the ability to create lists by patrons and build a national social network of readers.
• See the Rochester Community Wiki, BIZ wiki, and
• PennTags at the University of Pennsylvania, that allow students to create and tag working bibliographies.
• Rochester Wiki: The People's Guide to Rochester, a community developed wiki.
• BIZ wiki, a collection of business information resources available through Ohio University Libraries.

Matthew Bejune: Which libraries are using wikis and for what?

Digital Reference Services Coordinator at Purdue University, Indiana, Mr. Bejune shared his research on library development and use of wikis. The results of his research are published on LibraryWikis, a site Mr. Bejune hopes will be used by the library community in collaboration to track and support the use of wikis. (Password: lwcontrib)

Mr. Bejune research included a literature review of LIS as well as library blogs. He identified 35 wikis that fell into four categories:

1. Inter-library collaboration: 16 wikis
2. Collaboration of library staff: 11 wikis
3. Staff and patron collaboration: 5 wikis
4. Library-provided wikis used by patrons: 3 wikis

He speculated that the distribution of wikis in these four categories reflects the distribution of other types of social networking applications being used by libraries. Why are there significantly fewer wikis that have the patron as the primary contributor? Are libraries risk averse? Do libraries fear losing control?

Mr. Bejune suggested "25 perspectives on social networking," a post by Marlene Charlotte Larsen's on her doctoral dissertation blog, for a succinct list of perspectives on social networking.

Tim Spaulding: LibraryThing innovations.

Tim Spalding reviewed the social networking underpinnings of LibraryThing.com, which he is founder and developer.

LibraryThing facilitates conversations between readers and is a social approach to the cataloging of books.

It is also partnering with libraries and provides a number of useful services. LibrarythingISBN may aid libraries to FRBRize their records. APIs are also available to pull tags into a library's catalog and to build lists of what other readers are reading. Tags are pulled into the catalog for the titles in a library's collection only. Tags that have been used at least 10 times and by a minimum of 10 people are included. These tags are also screened for useless tags.

Mr. Spalding also discussed the advantages of free tagging over Library of Congress and Sears subject headings, providing such examples as cooking rather than cookery, chick lit as opposed to men and women relationships, academic, legal, medical or cozy mysteries as opposed to mystery. Tags provide perspective and context that subject headings used by catalogers do not provide.

He was also open about some of the problems and challenges of using tags. LibraryThing has learned that there's a need to filter tags. Filtering is especially important when too many tags and tags that are too idiosyncratic are used, such as the tags used for The Diary of Anne Frank, which has received 5,000 tags. Also, a critical number of tags needs to be reached for tags to be useful. Small numbers of tags can result in skewed subject access to collections.

LibraryThing will soon introduce the ability to mash up tags. The "tagmashup" will allow combinations such as "magic -fiction" and "chicklit Greece." LibraryThing may introduce articles soon and possibly other media.

When the question of extending the radical level of trust that allows anyone to join using an alias and contribute to LibraryThing to libraries, Tim questioned whether really knowing someone's name is superior to knowing the content of their thoughts, their choices in books, etc. LibraryThing is self-policing when it there is off-the-chart harassment and content.

2007 ALA Annual Conference Session

Joan Lippincott: Instructing the Millennials

Associate Executive Director at the Coalition for Networked Information Joan Lippincott spoke of the need to understand the learning styles of the Millennial Generation and need for educational institutions to adopt new approaches to instruction. Learners need to be assisted in the transition from recreational use of technology to its academic and professional use.

She argued that changes in today's student behaviors are real and reflect their immersion in a communication and information-rich culture. There's a need for educational institutions to master new learning principles and styles. And there's a need to adopt new instructional technologies where technology is a vehicle and not an end.

Net Gens? Millennials? Digital Natives? Gen Yers? Dotneters? The generation born between 1982-1991 has grown up with a variety of new technologies, especially mobile communications to which they are continuously tethered.

There's a considerable amount of research on the learning styles of the Millennials as well as identifying the core skills needed for digital-age learners. Ms. Lippincott suggests two sources of additional information on this: the MacArthur Foundation digital media and learning initiative and Henry Jenkins from MIT.

According to Henry Jenkins, learning styles of the Millennials include:

• Ability to work in groups - collective intelligence
• Ability to evaluate reliability and credibility of different sources - judgment
• Ability to scan one's environment and shift focus as needed to salient details - multitasking
• Ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real world processes - simulation
• Ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content - appropriation

Ms. Lippincott suggests libraries assume students are information producers. This reflects a convergence of literacies: writing, information literacy, technology and visual literacy.

To support learners in this convergence of skills, libraries will need to form new partnerships and master new technologies. Many libraries are already doing this and include Georgetown's Center for New Designs for Learning and Scholarship, Dartmouth's Student Center Research, Writing, and Information Technology (RWiT), University of Delaware's Student Multi-Media Design Center, Georgia Tech Library Presentation Rehearsal Studio.

Greater use of new technologies need to be used in instruction, including podcasts, wikis, social book marking, etc.

Instruction on intellectual property rights, copyright and creative common licensing will grow in importance. Standford University Eric Faden's video A fair(y) use tale represents one creative approach to this instruction.

Kathleen Burnett:

Associate Professor at Florida State University College for Information Kathleen Burnett spoke of using web 2.0 technologies in the classroom and that the learning styles of both digital immigrants and digital natives will need to be supported.

The impact of new media information and communications and new media has had positive impacts but also negative. In the last 20 years, the age group of 18-34 has moved from the most likely to read to the least likely to read compared to other age groups!

She suggested that based on the current research, the ideal learning environment for the digital native includes:

• Customization for individual needs
• Immediate and constructive feedback
• Increased learning options for experiential learning, including gaming and simulations
• Increased peer-to-peer learning
• More web-based options
• Interactive multimedia learning

Teachers should pull podcasts and vodcasts into their classrooms to bring additional voices into play. Teachers should use student podcasts, blogs and social networks to support small group discussion, and use wikis to support collaboration and to teach consensus-building and teamwork. Games and simulations should also be explored to engage spatial and kinetic learners.

She recommended reading “Meet the Future” by Brian O’Reilly in Fortune 142 (2000): 144-157, and the Pew Internet & American Life Project report "A Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users."

Kathryn Shaughnessy:

Instructional Services Librarian at the St. John's University libraries Kathryn Shaughnessy spoke about the challenges of supporting distance learners in St. John's international Social Justice Program. The program includes both graduate and undergraduate learners.

The library's task was to use technology and online media to support library instruction.The library selected open source software so students could continue to create resources after they left the program and worked in their home countries. The library used Captivate [not open source] for tutorials, Audacity for podcasts, Wordpress for blogs, and PPwiki and Mediawiki for wikis. It used Refworks for RSS, which has a built in RSS reader, to distribute content. It also used Skype for chats and communication and Del.icio.us for social bookmarking.