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August 19, 2008
Web 2.0 meets the National Library of Scotland's digital library
An interesting blog on the newer applications taken on recently by the National Library of Scotland. The National Library currently has a presence on Facebook, and collections on YouTube and Flickr. The library is using these newer modes of social media to promote the library and provide a means to reach new users, while also striving to create human interaction within these medias.
An article discussing some of the metadata issues from the YouTube project at the National Library by Eilidh MacGlone from the Scottish Screen Archive can be found here. MacGlone addresses some of the shortcomings of the descriptive metadata incorporated into the videos hosted on YouTube, while also highlighting the potential of effective tagging.
While some of the control of the regular library catalog may be lost through these avenues, other methods of access and inter-relation emerge. One of the newer features on YouTube is the 'warp speed', which relates videos in a more visual manner, or Flickr's geotagging which can correlate a certain geographical location to an image. While this is also prone to error and inaccuracy, I think these methods are also evidence of other ways of searching, particularly with strictly Web reliant users. Many web users search the web using natural language, giving more credibility to tagging in Web contexts.
In any regard, there is a way of keeping track of usage on both Flickr and YouTube, so in the least an institution can get a sense of how many hits a single image or video receives. Whether these users will venture on to the institution's website or even use the collection in another method remains to be seen, but make for an interesting study.
Posted by vad17 at August 19, 2008 01:57 PM
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Hi, many thanks for the kind comments on the blog - its been a really interesting trial for us. I'm due to be reporting back to the management team on how its gone over the last few months and right at the moment I'm in two minds over the absolute value in relation to the time commitment.
I guess the broad conclusion I have come to is that for now anyway, these efforts in 'web 2.0' have all been about marketing, learning and communications - the real change will come with the development of true standards and technologies that allow us to expose the objects we hold such that they can be utilized by others. I think that at the moment, the concepts of web 3.0 are starting to ingnite a spark of excitement within the library community, and the 'utility' sites as we call them, such as flickr and youtube are teasing us a little into thinking that they are delivering these services. However they are still not quite there, and the real work will be in how we, as a library, start to develop mechanisms that offer our objects out as a service.
Web 3.0 is looking to be a fascinating place, and only a few seem to have grasped how important the skills of the librarians are in forming the future in this respect.
I'll sign off by pointing you to a couple of very good presentations that describe the concepts well - http://www.slideshare.net/freekbijl/web-30-explained-with-a-stamp and http://www.slideshare.net/freekbijl/web-30-explained-with-a-stamp-pt-ii
Anyhow - apologies for the ramblings, and thanks again for getting in touch. Perhaps our paths will cross again!
Posted by: James Toon at August 19, 2008 07:42 PM