David Lee King

social media | emerging trends | libraries

Interesting backwash about the L2 Class

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Here’s some interesting reading about ALA’s Library 2.0 class. Start here:

 The short version?

  • The company doing ALA’s L2 program decided to make the class blogs, podcasts, etc open – anyone can subscribe to them.
  • There is criticism in the library blogosphere because of the tools used and because of incorrect terminology (ie., podcasts).
  • The CEO of the company doing ALA’s L2 program states in her blog post “I am going to try to use this as a learning experience for all of us because it certainly is a mirror for what may happen as you all start to move into the 2.0 world” and “So let’s use this as part of our learning experience” in this post, which was sent because of the criticism.

But apparently, some other emails were also sent, and were felt to be threatening to the recipients (at least in one case). The email was clarified a little bit in the comments to the recipients “I was asked to delete this post” post.

So why am I posting about it? Because I got really irritated.

So – to the company – if you REALLY want to treat this like the learning experience you say it is… please please please DO SO! Don’t send emails stating “I view the nature of your post on the [company name edited out] as both erroneous and possibly damaging to my business. I would like to ask you to remove the post immediately.”

Instead, say things like:

  • Thanks. How can we improve for the next class?
  • This is a pilot project, so there will be bumps along the way.
  • Or just a simple “thank you” and then forget about it.

But to be in charge of a Library 2.0 class, then to ask the person who CREATED the term Library 2.0 to delete his post? Something is really wrong there… I think you owe him an apology – that’s decidedly NOT Library 2.0.

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Another Web 2.0 Class Tomorrow

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I’m teaching another one of my 4-hour Introduction to Web 2.0 classes tomorrow, and I’m changing it up a bit.

Defining the conept of Web 2.0 to primarily non-techie librarians is HARD! So this time, I’m going into a bit more detail. This time, I have the class broken down this way:

1. Brief intro to web 2.0 through a couple of definitions and a little discussion
2. A new “Glue of Web 2.0” section, where I list commonalities of many web 2.0 products, like:

  • RSS feeds
  • ability to tag
  • ability to comment
  • user supplied content
  • web as platform
  • mashups

… and I will give examples for each of those sections.

3. Then I’ll jump into specifics, and cover blogs, feed readers, flickr, bookmark managers, etc.


BBC is Heading Towards Web 2.0!

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From the Church of the Customer blog: “For information providers, it’s better to charge for access to the community you develop around your data, not the information itself.”

“That’s the approach the BBC is taking by announcing it will reformulate its web-based publishing model to embrace user-created content and reader communities. The news evangelists are getting an upgrade.”

The article goes on to say this: “Based on rampant evidence that an open model of content creation — in which content spurs content creation — can be strong generator of reach and influence, the BBC is smart to democratize its own online network of content.”

This is amazing, and hopefully it works – then (maybe) the US media will follow. Here’s more, from the Guardian: ” [at the BBC presentation on this change, the presenter] outlined a three-pronged approach to refocus all future BBC digital output and services around three concepts – “share”, “find” and “play”. ”

“He said the philosophy of “share” would be at the heart of what he dubbed bbc.co.uk 2.0. [emphasis mine, of course]”

I’ll leave you with one more juicy tidbit (go read both articles!): “The BBC is also running a competition to revamp the bbc.co.uk 2.0 website, asking the public to redesign the homepage to “exploit the functionality and usability of services such as Flickr, YouTube, Technorati and Wikipedia”. ”

wow.

Article on Personal and Participatory Media

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From The Economist – “Among the Audience” – this article focuses on how the era of mass media is giving way to an era of personal and participatory media. Here are some juicy tidbits:

1. A comparison to Gutenberg’s movable type and the Trott’s Movable Type blogging application – the article claims they make dandy bookends for the era of mass media (cool thought).

2. 57% of teenagers create content for the internet

3. Perople no longer passively consume media, but now actively participate in them, which usually means creating content

4. Doesn’t mean “people write their own newspaper” – it can be as simple as rating a local restaurant or a movie they watched

5. Money isn’t the reason to create content – instead, there are two ends to the spectrum – one end is “people creating stuff to build their own reputations” (hmm – fits in pretty well with the recent discussion about self-promotion), and the other end are “one-man superbrands” (the article lists Steven Speilberg as an example – I’d list real bloggers, like Jeremy Zawodny (sp?) )

6. “one-to-many “lectures” (ie, from media companies to their audiences) are transformed into “conversations” among “the people formerly known as the audience”. This changes the tone of public discussions”

7. “What is new is that young people today, and most people in future, will be happy to decide for themselves what is credible or worthwhile and what is not. They will have plenty of help. Sometimes they will rely on human editors of their choosing; at other times they will rely on collective intelligence in the form of new filtering and collaboration technologies that are now being developed” (as opposed to large media giants “pushing” selected media at us.

After this article, there are other articles about specific things, like blogging… possibly more later!