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Panel Session:
Optimising Technology in Libraries
The Sceptics View Of
New Technologies
About This Talk
Panel sessions sometimes fail to
be interactive and simply give
mini-presentations which fail to
engage the audience.
Email
In this talk Brian Kelly challenges
[email protected]
consensus views and invites
rebuttals.
Brian Kelly
UKOLN
University of Bath
Bath
UKOLN is supported by:
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
The Areas
XHTML
RSS and
News Feeds
Areas Of
Consensus
Wikis
Blogs
A centre of expertise in digital information management
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www.ukoln.ac.uk
XHTML – Where We Should Be
XHTML:
• Latest version of HTML
• W3C Recommendation
• Provides formal grammar which makes reuse
easier
• Use of XHTML Strict encouraged as a migration
path to XHTML 2.0 and true happiness
XHTML is HTML expressed in an XML format. This promises the
advantages of XML through simple changes to the well-used HTML
grammar (e.g. tags in lower case, quoted attributes, etc.)
XHTML 1.0 will be followed by XHTML 2.0 – a redesigned markup
language based on best practices and lessons learnt (and is not
backwards compatible)
A centre of expertise in digital information management
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www.ukoln.ac.uk
XHTML – Where We Should Be?
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But:
• Invalid XML pages should not be processed
(unlike HTML where the spec expects browsers
to attempt to render them)
• Most Web pages are still invalid
• Widespread use of XHTML will result in mostly
blank pages in Web browsers!
• 94% of browsers don’t support XHTML correctly
• Tweak in XHTML spec which allows for
deviations for non-compliant browsers is
ambiguous
• Is it likely that a non-backwards-compatible
XHTML 2.0 will ever take off?
Conclusions: XHTML is not a standard which should
A
centre
of expertise inlightly
digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
be
deployed
RSS And News Feeds - Cool
RSS:
• A lightweight format for syndication
• Support provided for free in many Blogs
• Widely used (e.g. BBC, …)
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www.ukoln.ac.uk
RSS And News Feeds – Cool?
But:
• Embedding newsfeeds from 3rd parties on
your Web site allows them to write to your
Web site without further checking – this
could be dangerous
• Even if the news is accurate the content
could be embarrassing (e.g. THES news of
University league table with your University
bottom)
• Which RSS – 0.9, 1.0, 2.0 or Atom?
• Do we have mature QA for news feeds yet
(e.g. invalid characters such as &, © and £
can cause feeds to break)
A centre of expertise in digital information management
www.ukoln.ac.uk
6
Blogs – Too Good To be True
Blogs:
• Allows individuals to publish content easily
• Often standards based – e.g. RSS feeds
• Blog companies provide professional
looking templates
• Democratising :
• Blog community responses to misleading
statements in US election
• The Baghdad Blogger
•…
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www.ukoln.ac.uk
Blogs – Too Good To be True?
Blogs:
• Vanity publishing
• I don’t want to read about every thing you
did today
• Often not maintained (remember the diary
you received as a child?)
• The potentially valuable stuff may be
stored by third parties
• Will it still be there next year?
• Who owns it?
• Organisational memory can be diffused
A centre of expertise in digital information management
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www.ukoln.ac.uk
Wikis – One To Watch
Wikis:
• The Web as
originally
envisaged everyone can
author
• Easy to use
• Wikipedia is a
proven success
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Wikis – One To Watch?
Wikis:
• Can we trust everyone?
• Dangers of automated Wiki spam: Wikipedia may
be able to manage this, but can we?
• “A colleague has created a page in a Wiki. I
disagree with the content, but it’s his page. If he
sent it by email I would have given my views in my
reply”
• Can we trust the content ?
• Traditional Web authoring (content author -> Web
editor) may lead to bottlenecks but ensures quality
• Lack of standards for the Wiki markup
• Too much Wiki software –which is the best?
A centre of expertise in digital information management
10
www.ukoln.ac.uk
Questions
Any questions, comments, disagreements, …?
A centre of expertise in digital information management
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www.ukoln.ac.uk