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Web 2.0 - Implications
for IT Services
Marieke Guy
Interoperability Focus
[email protected]
UKOLN is supported by:
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk
About Me
• Work for UKOLN, National centre of expertise in digital
information management
• Located at the University of Bath
• Funded by JISC and MLA to advise UK HE and FE
communities and the cultural heritage sector
• Areas of work include: UK Web Focus, Ariadne,
support for digital repositories, Grand Challenge project
• I work on the Interoperability Focus team, previous
roles include….
• Following in the footsteps of Brian ‘the guru’ Kelly
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk
About this Session
• Start with an introductory talk that uses Web 2.0
technologies and attitude:
– PowerPoint slides contain links to relevant
resources, CC licence for slides
– Resources bookmarked on del.icio.us
(with tag ucisa-tlig-2006
)
– Always beta – not everything will necessarily work,
but that's not the end of the world
• Followed by a chance to discuss the challenges and
implications
• Finally a quick talk to sum up, conclude and take things
forward
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk
Contents
– Introduction
– Where Are We Now?
– Web 2.0:
 Web 2.0 technologies
 Web 2.0 culture
– Deployment Challenges
– Conclusions
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk
Where Are We Now?
• Web now established as a communications medium
• Many positive aspects of the UK Institutional Web and
IT community:
– Willingness to share experiences
– Many annual events
– Communication - people talk & socialise
• Challenges we face:
– Managing with limited resources
– Managing service vs supporting user needs
– Expectations of users
– Role(s) of our Web services
– Exploitation of new technologies
www.bath.ac.uk
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
So What is Web 2.0?
• Marketing term (derived from observing 'patterns')
rather than technical standards - “an attitude not a
technology” – now patented
• Characteristics Of Web 2.0
– Network as platform, always beta
– Clean URIs
– Remix and mash-ups
– Syndication (RSS)
– Architecture of participation
– Blogs & Wikis
– Social networking and social tagging (folksonomies)
– Trust and openness
www.bath.ac.uk
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Web2MemeMap,
Tim O’Reilly, 2005
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk
Web 2.0 Exemplars
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
Let's look at some examples
www.bath.ac.uk
Blogs
• Weblog is a web-based publication made up of periodic
articles, like an online diary
• Ideal for use in HE (MySpace, Bebo, LiveJournal)
– by students: sharing learning; reflections on
learning; developing writing & social skills
– by researchers: sharing knowledge and ideas;
maximising impact…
• Use Technorati to search new postings in Blogs (139
posts hits for UCISA on 6/06/2006)
• Talis (UK library vendor), CETIS are publishing Blogs
• Want to engage with your users? Why not set up an IT
Services Blog? Issues with censorship etc.
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk
http://www.technorati.com/
http://www.cetis.ac.uk/members/scott/
http://www.bath.ac.uk/e-learning/Auricle.htm
http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/
High www.ukoln.ac.uk
profile e-learning Blog from Bath Univ. Note
www.bath.ac.uk
reference
another
verymanagement
relevant
technology
Keep
of e-learning
developments
from
Ainformed
centretoofPodcast
expertise
in–digital
information
Scott Wilson's (CETIS) Blog. Note use of an RSS
Wikis
• Wikis provide collaborative, easy-to-use Web-based
authoring.
• Again ideal for students, researchers and support staff for
collaborative work allowing focus on content, not on
authoring tools
• Some issues for Web/marketing people
– Should you be proactive in ensuring content is
accurate?
– Should you seek to lead in order to define structure?
– Same old censorship issues
• What about for systems documentation, note-taking,
student group working, research work
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk
Web 2.0
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop-focus/community/index/IWMW2006
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk
Podcasts
• University of Michigan School
of Dentistry provide students
with access to educationrelated content virtually
anywhere
• Are your University Podcasts
available through iTunes?Aren't
you missing out on a major
distribution channel? (Student
radio)
• iPod/MP3 portable ownership at
around 12% in 2005,
heavilyskewed to 18-28 age
group
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A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk
http://www.dent.umich.edu/about/aboutschool/news/news2005/news091905.html
http://www.everyobject.net/static.php?page=interactive
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk
Web 2.0
Instant Messaging (IM)
http://www.meebo.com/
•IM – popular, widely used,
with benefits for
collaboration, but banned
in some places
•Meebo:
– Web-based IM client
– An AJAX application
•Issues:
– How do you ban it?
– Interoperability
– Doesn't it break WAI
guidelines?
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk
Folksonomies
• Keywords, tags, metadata
• Created by groups/communities who are the resource
users
• Feedback loop is key
• Used for bookmarking, Images, video and sound, other
areas (events, goals, colours etc.)
• Many flaws in the approach (ambiguity, searching etc.)
• Many potential benefits (cheap and extendable, added
value metadata etc.)
• Implications include shift in metadata creation, trigger
for communication, snap shot of current world, spam
• Library use, IT services use – shared resources
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk
www.ukoln.ac.uk
www.bath.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information
management
http://del.icio.us/tag/iwmw2006
Mash Ups
• Mashup – merging information from multiple sources
(cf music mashups)
• Web services releasing APIs – Google Maps, (Is your
campus map rescalable without loss of resolution?),
Google Earth,
• Can you merge data from 3rd party sources with your
maps
• Examples include google maps and BBC traffic data,
crime information
<http://www.chicagocrime.org/types/theft/58> hurricane
Katrina information
<http://www.scipionus.com/katrina.html>
• See <http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/> for more examples
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk
Feeds
See RSS
briefing paper
• E-mail has its role but:
– Why send messages which time-out when many
users will read them too late?
– Why not use delivery channels which are spam-free
and are more suited to receiving information (as
opposed to discussions)?
– Why not allow users to select their preferred
channels?
• Feeds allow syndication of content – use RSS 2.0 or
Atom
• Great for education – an attenuation device
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk
Feeds
• Allows you to mix, organise, rate and annotate
resources
• Perfect for news, many other uses too – courses,
social activities
• Use a dedicated RSS viewer - Opera or Pluck plugin
• Maybe RSS viewers should be standard on desktops?
• Can also be used for people (FOAF) and events
(iCalendar)
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk
Personalised Web Environment
http://www.netvibes.com/
• Netvibes is an example
of a personalised Web
environment – just add
your favourite RSS feeds
• Can be:
– Conventional news
feeds
– RSS from email (e.g
GMail)
– Dynamic RSS from
searches
• Also have a look at
www.bath.ac.uk
Suprglu
Note that Netvibes has an AJAX interface,
so that www.ukoln.ac.uk
the windows can be dragged
centre of expertise
in digital information
around Abrowser
area, closed,
etc.  management
Mobile Devices
• Potential of mobile
devices in learning,
research, etc.
• GPS combined with web
services for weather,
traffic ETC.
• mobile-based email
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk
Web 2.0
Skype / VoIP
• Skype is a good example of
Internet telephony:
 Integrated voice, IM, Web
(and now video)
 Can be high quality
 Free / cheap calls
 Conference calls
 Accessibility benefits
 Proprietary
 Network issues
VoIP is coming, so now’s the time to gain experiences. What are the
www.bath.ac.uk
www.ukoln.ac.uk
implications of ‘free’ always-on telephony (i.e. it's not just about
A centre of expertise in digital information management
software) - you could be broadcasting this talk now!
Open Culture
• Culture of openness, trust, beta and open source
• Creative commons licences for work
• EUNIS 2005 paper on "Let's Free IT Support
Materials!" as an example of what UK HE could be
doing
www.ukoln.ac.uk
www.bath.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital informationhttp://creativecommons.org/
management
Break Out Session
• How can IT services deploy Web 2.0?
• More importantly, should we (isn't it just hype?)
• What are the technical and cultural barriers to
implementing Web 2.0?
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk
Technical & Cultural Barriers
•Technical Barriers:
– Will it work?
 Is it interoperable?
– Is it secure?
 Is performance acceptable?
– Do we have the expertise, resources, …
– …
•Cultural and Organisational Barriers:
•What/who? – Some stereotypes!
– IT Services!!!
 Librarians
– Academics
 Senior management
– Users
 …
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk
IT Fundamentalists
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
We need to avoid simplistic solutions to the complexities:
Open Standards Fundamentalist: we just need XML
Open Source Fundamentalist: we just need Linux
Vendor Fundamentalist: we must need next version of our
enterprise system (and you must fit in with this)
Accessibility Fundamentalist: we must do WAI WCAG
User Fundamentalist: we must do whatever users want
Legal Fundamentalist: it breaches copyright, …
Ownership Fundamentalist: must own everything we use
Perfectionist: It doesn't do everything, so we'll do nothing
Simplistic Developer: I've developed a perfect solution –
I don't care if it doesn't run in the real world
www.bath.ac.uk
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
IT Services
• Don't understand learning and teaching and think that
students only ever use the Web for messing around
• Have no interest in what the users actually want and
generally prefer to give the users what they themselves
think they want.
• Tend to work in silos (example: student information
systems team which won't talk to the VLE team). They
have no concept of team working across services or
with academic staff.
• Consultation usually consists of them telling you what
they are going to do. If you tell them what you want
they don't listen!
• Computer says “no”! image
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk
The Librarian Fundamentalists
• Think they know better than the user e.g. they don't like
people using Google Scholar; they should use Web of
Knowledge
• Think that users should be forced to learn Boolean
searching & other formal search techniques because this is
good for them
• Don't want the users to search for themselves (cf
folksonomies) because they won't get it right
• They still want to classify the entire Web - despite the fact
that users don't use their lists of Web links.
• Want services to be perfect before they will release them to
their users. They are very uncomfortable with the concept
of 'forever beta'
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk
Academics
• Many academic are conservative and won't care
• Many will feel threatened
• Many won't like WiFi in lecture theatres, students
chatting on IRC, Googling answers, …
• Many will soon ask for WiFi to be removed, blocked
from lecture theatres (including areas where it's not yet
available!)
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk
Senior Managers & Users
• Senior management:
– Don't understand technologies
– Can be conservative
– More comfortable with conventional business
relations with vendors
– May be over-cautious about being sued
• Users:
– Can be conservative and many don't understand
technologies
– Those that do may use the technologies in
dangerous ways
– Others may have high expectations (computer
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www.ukoln.ac.uk
games
A centre of expertise in digital information management
Principles
Draft principles available
• IT Services should consider:
– User Focus
– Avoiding Dogma
– Responsive to Change
– Good Communications
• Developers should consider:
– Scalability
– Sustainability
– Reliability
– Integration
– Consistency
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk
Conclusions
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
We need a change in culture
To be more open (surely what HE is about?)
Revisiting AUPs – should not be a control mechanism
Developing more sophisticated models for standards,
accessibility, open source, …
Integrating IT Policies With Institutional Policies
Ongoing debate and discussion
Holistic or blended approach - flexibility in implementation
Exploit UKOLN's QA Focus briefing documents:
90+ documents available with CC licence
Contribute to UKOLN's Wiki on Best Practices for CMSs
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk
Questions?
• Acknowledgements:
Thanks to Brian Kelly and IWMW2006 for slides,
inspiration and insight
• http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/interop-focus/events/ucisa-tlig2006/futures/
www.ukoln.ac.uk
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.bath.ac.uk