Final report and ‘great practice’ videos now available!

This project has now come to a close. It has been a wonderful journey. It commenced in late 2008 and continued through to the end of 2009, with the final report being completed and published in 2010. The report is available here.  You may be especially interested in the 10 ‘best practice’ videos that have been produced. These videos showcase some of the wonderful ways that Australia’s LIS educators are developing the nation’s LIS professionals to be successful in a web 2.0 world (and beyond). As I noted this really is a journey, and whilst the funding may have ceased my interest and work exploring how to educate LIS professionals for a dynamic world of information practice will continue. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you would like to learn more – h.partridge@qut.edu.au or follow me on Twitter #partridh.

Web trends for 2010

Hi everyone!

A quick post to wish everyone a good end of year break, and to let you know to check back with us in the new year for updates to the discussion papers section on our Resources page.

Leaving you now with a CNN article looking at some web trends for the coming year: “10 Web Trends to Watch in 2010”.  You might foresee some interesting implications for libraries here.

Learning our Library 101

Both entertaining and enlightening, the Library 101 project has just been launched by David Lee King and Michael Porter.  Aimed at inspiring us to integrate past, present and future librarian skills in order to continue thriving in a changing environment, the project is collaborative and ongoing.  Check out their ‘music video’ below for a fun introduction to their idea:

Library 101 by David Lee King and Michael Porter

Do be sure to check out their list for 100+ past, present and future skills for the profession, many of which could easily apply to librarian 2.0.  A very thorough and thought-provoking list!

You can check out an interesting assortment of essays from library professionals on the website as well.  Happy reading!

If you find something that you feel is important (or lacking) for librarian 2.0 skills and knowledge then we would love to know about it – we’ve been discussing similar ideas on our “Librarian 2.0?” page.

University assessment 2.0?

A recent news story in the technology sector identifies Queensland’s Griffith University as being one of the first to use Twitter as a tool for assessing students:

…About 340 first-year Griffith University journalism students have to Tweet ongoing assessment pieces this semester.

Lecturer Dr Jacqui Ewart said she understood Griffith to be the first university to use the social media tool to test students.

“We thought it was important to introduce it because increasingly employers are asking employees to use these kind of (social networking) mechanisms and marketing and promotional devices,” Dr Ewart said…

The lecturers in the article acknowledge the importance of using social media tools not just in response to industry demand for specific skills, but also because they are seen as a useful way to incorporate professional networking activity into the curriculum.

You can read the full article online here: “Griffith University journalism students to be marked on tweets”.

Are these the kinds of things that we would find beneficial to incorporate into LIS degrees as well?

Discussion Paper Two now available

Hi everyone,

Discussion Papers I and II are now available to download on our Resources page.  These give a good overview of the project and preliminary findings so far, so be sure to check them out!  Comments, thoughts, and opinions are all very welcome and encouraged, so please do let us know what you think.

The library – warehouse for books or community gathering centre?

CNN has an interesting article looking at the ways in which libraries and librarians are continuing to evolve in response to increased digitisation of information and use of social technologies.  Highlights include:

Library 2.0…

People used to go online for the same information they could get from newspapers. Now they go to Facebook, Digg and Twitter to discuss their lives and the news of the day. Forward-looking librarians are trying to create that same conversational loop in public libraries. The one-way flow of information from book to patron isn’t good enough anymore…

Community Centers…

Jason M. Schultz, director of the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic at the University of California at Berkeley Law School, said libraries always have served two roles in society: They’re places where people can get free information; and they’re community centers for civic debate.
As books become more available online, that community-center role will become increasingly important for libraries, he said…

Librarians…

This shift means the role of the librarian — and their look — is also changing.
In a world where information is more social and more online, librarians are becoming debate moderators, givers of technical support and community outreach coordinators…

And finally…

“I came into libraries and it wasn’t about books,” said Peter Norman, a graduate student in library and information science at Simmons College in Boston who says he’s most interested in music and technology. “Sure I love to read. I read all the time. I read physical books. But I don’t have the strange emotional attachment that some people possess.”
“If the library is going to turn into a place without books, I’m going to evolve with that too,” he said.

Click here to read the full article: “The future of libraries, with or without books”.

What do you think?  Are you seeing the same kinds of changes in your own libraries?  You might like to post a comment on our “Librarian 2.0?” page if you haven’t already done so!

Librarians responding to the digital age

Bloggers from Follow the Reader have posted a recent interview with two library professionals about how they are perceiving some of the challenges of the digital age for libraries.  From the blog post:

As digital publishing options become more and more prevalent, libraries of all kinds are working to incorporate digital into their collections and service offerings. This is no easy task, and libraries face plenty of obstacles as they gear up for the digital age. To get a bit of insight about how some libraries and librarians seem to be dealing with the changes of “Library 2.0,” we spoke with Kathy Ishizuka, the technology editor of School Library Journal, and Shayera Tangri, a branch manager for the Los Angeles Public Library…

Click here to read the rest of the post and the interview: “Libraries (and Librarians): Braving the Digital Age”.

Web 2.0 fast facts

Just for fun, here are some web 2.0 ‘fast facts’ that demonstrate the increasing popularity of online social technologies both in Australia and worldwide:

• 76% of online Australian adults regularly use social technologies (Source: Forrester)

• Approximately 30% of Australians have their own blog (Source: Universal McCann)

• Australia is currently the fourth biggest Twitter-using country (Source: Sysomos)

• There are around 37,500 new blog posts per hour (or 10.4 new posts per second) (Soure: Technorati)

• More than 5 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day worldwide (Source: Facebook)

• 13 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube per minute (Source: Google)

• There are around 3 million new Twitter messages or ‘tweets’ per day (Source: TechCrunch)

• The total time spent on social media sites has increased 82% in the last year (Source: Nielsen)

A new approach to defining library 2.0

An article has just been published in the newest issue of the Journal of Documentation that attempts to answer the question “What is library 2.0?” from the perspective of library professionals.  (For those without access to the journal you can check out a related presentation here.)

Researchers from Åbo Akademi University in Finland used a technique that identifies trends based on the co-occurrence of words, as library professionals attempted to explain what ‘library 2.0’ means to them.

The researchers were able to map out seven core concepts or “building blocks” that they believe define library 2.0 from a professional perspective.  These seven identified components of library 2.0 are represented in the image below:

The Building Blocks of Library 2.0 [image taken from http://library2pointoh.fi/]

The researchers could then use these core building blocks to provide their own empirically-based definition of library 2.0:

“Library 2.0 is a change in interaction between users and libraries in a new culture of participation catalysed by social web technologies.”

As you can see, this definition coincides with many previous ideas about library 2.0 and the notion that it is about more than just the technology – rather it is about what the technology is allowing us to do.  Some would even say that technology is not essential to a definition of library 2.0 at all.  What do you think?

Of course this would also mean that ‘librarian 2.0’ will be about more than just the technological skills as well.  Is technology necessary to define your idea of librarian 2.0?  Opinions are very welcome on our “Librarian 2.0?” page as always, so if you haven’t yet visited you might like to do so!

You can find out more about the work of the Finnish researchers above by checking out their blog (in English): Library 2.0: A new participatory context.

Web 2.0 resources for educators and professionals

JISC Netskills this month made public a preview of several web 2.0 animations created as part of a new Web2practice project, recently announced at the JISC Conference 2009.  The project aims to provide educators and professionals with online guides and resources to enable them to learn more about the benefits of web 2.0 technologies for their work practices.  Not only will professionals be able to use the resources provided to enhance their own understanding of web 2.0 tools, but – true to the spirit of web 2.0 – they will be able to share and remix content for purposes such as staff development and creating their own training and teaching aids.

Currently the project has animated videos available for topics such as social media, microblogging, podcasting and RSS, with more to be released in the coming months.  The videos will eventually be accompanied by editable guides and other resources free to be downloaded and adapted under a creative commons licence.

You can hear more about the project in the slidecast below:

Click to play slidecast

Overview of the Web2practice Project by Will Allen and Steve Boneham of JISC Netskills

Available project resources can be accessed by heading to the Web2practice project website.