(Guide time: 1 hour)

Introduction

Why do the course?

You're probably working under a lot of pressure. Public services are going through difficult times, budgets are being cut, staff are being asked to take on a wider and wider role, workloads are increasing. Why are you being asked to do a course which is so frivolous when you need to keep your head down and get your work done?

The course will give you umpteen reasons why you should know about Web 2.0. We've put 23 of them into a Word document and attached them to this page: you'll find the document at the foot.

But here's the one biggest, the killer reason, the one that alone would justify going online even if the other 22 didn't exist: doing stuff online is no longer optional. It's an essential life skill, and you're a second class citizen with a poorer quality of life if you can't do it. In today's environment, you have to be able to apply for a tax disc, look up the telephone number of the local garage, apply for a job, ask for help setting up your new TV recording system, book a hospital appointment, keep track of your friends' birthdays - all online.

I'm not (just) talking about us library staff. I'm talking about our users. One adult in five in Britain is digitally excluded, and the government has plans for getting everybody in the country skilled up for using the internet. Guess what? Our role in this is going to be HUGE. We need to get better at helping people to get online, and we need to get really good at offering services they want to use once they're there.

If you haven't been involved in this in your library, you need to be aware of a couple of things. Spend a couple of minutes having a look at the following:


Go on - make online easy - the programme offered through UK Online Centres.
Did you know? - video. (Approach this with caution if you suffer from migraines - there's a lot of Powerpoint slides in a short space of time.)

About 23 Things

23 Things is an informal course for staff to work on at their own pace, giving you the chance to learn about new technologies on the internet.

The course is self-directed and unstructured and will point you in the direction of where to explore. Then you go ahead and look around. We want you to PLAY!


Picture courtesy of Mitch Ditkoff and IdeaChampions

There are seven Things that are marked as "Core". This just means that we think they are the very least you should know about Web 2.0.

Each week the work should take no more than one hour, if you are familiar with the topic and already have an account you may finish our activities quicker but there are recommended followups you can do.

The legal bit

There's a lot of mistrust about the internet, and about social networking in particular. If you read nothing but the newspapers, you would swear that it's a hotbed of fraudsters and paedophiles. There's an awful lot of bad news stories out there about people who've had their bank accounts emptied, or whose children have been groomed by strangers, or who have posted a careless comment on Facebook and lost their job as a result.

Make sure your mistrust is reasonable. It's reasonable to be careful about what you tell strangers, or to protect private data about yourself and your assets. It's unreasonable to think that social networks are populated by people who mean you harm. It's important that you learn how to behave, protect yourself online, and get a basic understanding of intellectual property, and to that end we've written The legal bit. (You don't have to read it immediately: it's the seventh of the 7 Core Things.)

What is Web 2.0?

The term Web 2.0 was popularised in 2004. It's an artificial term that covers two newish concepts: social networking and user generated content.

Social networking allows people to identify and pull together networks of friends and acquaintances.
User generated content allows people to upload photos, films, and snippets or whole lumps of information, which then can be shared across the social networks. It also allows people to "tag" and bookmark and review and rate existing information.

Web 2.0 covers a supposed second-generation of internet based services such as Facebook, Wikipedia, blogs and social bookmarking that let people collaborate and share information online. See Wikipedia's Web 2.0 page

But what does that REALLY mean?

Watch this video Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us to find some answers!

Web 2.0 has become a phenomenon because it has enabled a read/write web for everyone, rather than a read only web for the majority of people.

It has allowed people to easily make connections that they would not otherwise have been able to make. Connections to others, connections to their own areas of interest, connections to people they would never have had the opportunity to meet elsewhere.

It has provided a self-service web using cheap, simple and easy to use applications.
It has enabled unbounded creativity. Anyone can unleash their creative urges in writing, in design, in humour, in videos, in audio...all within the DIY world of Web 2.0.

Exciting?? Oh yes………

Recommended followups

There are countless websites, books, blogs and reports on the subject of Web 2.0 technology and its applications. Here is a short list of books that contains some really influential reading.




Library 2.0

If Web 2.0 is about social networking and user generated content, Library 2.0 is about applying these things to the catalogue (and is often applied more widely to virtual services, such as joining online and reserving books). It reflects a transition within the library world in the way that services are delivered to users. You could argue that Library 1.0 was about us deciding what our customers wanted, and then delivering it in a way that meant that people had to come to us to use it. Library 2.0 is about libraries working with the public around the catalogue, books and reading.

The focus is on user-centered change and participation in the creation of content and community. At the moment it translates into people being able to review and rate books, join in polls and discussions, scroll through book covers, recommend books to friends, create mini-collections of catalogue records in places like LibraryThing or on their iPhones. In the future it may develop into more meaningful engagement.

It's a bit radical. Maybe library users should be able to choose books for their libraries, participate in staff recruitment, decide how much money should be spent on the library service? These are all startling concepts at the moment, but people are talking about it. Watch this space.

Library 2.0 is more than just a term for the use of technology; it can also describe mindset changes that are occurring within libraries to make our spaces and services more user-friendly and inviting. It could be said that libraries have always been 2.0: collaborative, customer focussed and welcoming. Whatever, libraries of tomorrow, even five or ten years from now, will look substantially different from libraries today.

Recommended followups*

Here are several articles that explore Library 2.0 in more depth:

• Wikipedia definition of Library2.0
• We know what Library2.0 is
• Away from Icebergs
• Into a New World of Librarianship
• Library 2.0: The Challenge of Disruptive Innovation
• There is even a Library 2.0 social network for you to join: Library2.0

A little light reading in preparation for the rest of the course!

(*Recommended followups are links that take you further if you're interested - but you don't have to follow them if you don't want to. You'll find recommended followups in each Thing, but they're not fundamental to this course.)



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