About this Blog

This blog consists of a series of reviews that offer my responses and summaries of four different texts written by four separate authors. Information regarding our contemporary digital world is presented in the texts from four very different authorial positions. Roxanne Missingham speaks from a position of national authority about access and equity issues across the Australian library sector, while business leader Moira Levy gives the global business point of view on the compatibility of Web 2.0 services and knowledge management aspirations. Dr Fred Heath tells an American academic libraries tale in contrast to  technology and science writer Paul Anderson who proposes an analytic framework for ideas underpinning Web 2.0 services . As a group these articles raise a variety of issues that impact on our daily lives in this global network society. Such issues include survival strategies for academic libraries and the importance of digital literacy in a liberal democracy. I hope you find much food for thought … 

Review: Anderson, P., (2007)

Anderson, P. (2007). 'All That Glisters is not Gold' - Web 2.0 and the Librarian, Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 39(4), 195-198.
     An article by Paul Anderson, technology writer and scientist based in the UK. For more information about this writer see: techlun.ch/about/
      Paul Anderson applies science to the business of Web 2.0. From his science and technology writer's position he protests a general lack of evaluative literature on the ideas that underpin and drive widespread services on the Web, commonly known today as Web 2.0. This critical review provides a brief synopsis of Anderson's analytical framework, developed he claims with the aim of providing belated clarity to Web 2.0 concepts. For Anderson this framework aims to facilitate greater understanding of Web applications and thus pave new ways for librarians to better engage with and influence the myriad issues arising out of Web 2.0 services in libraries. As an umbrella term for discussion, Web 2.0 services in libraries have come to be referred to and discussed as Library 2.0 (Casey & Savastinuk, 2007)
      Although Anderson recognises recent theoretical contributions from commentators such as Kevin Curran (2006) and Jack Maness (2006) to the growing critical literature surrounding Library 2.0 environments and Web 2.0 applications, the author throughout this article looks to the business world for the origination of the 'amorphous' term Web 2.0 and uses it as a springboard for his dissection and unraveling of the moniker. Here he addresses an online paper by Tim O'Reilly, CEO of the influential online publishing company O'Reilly Media, presented at the Web 2.0 Conference of 2005 (O'Reilly, 2005). Anderson expands on O'Reilly's business outline of 'seven basic principals of Web 2.0' to further his aim towards developing a structured framework for the 'transformational ideas' underlying these applications. This he explains will supplement progression towards an agreed definition of Library 2.0 and increase critical engagement for librarians in their continuing adaptation of library-based Web 2.0 services such as user-generated content on blogs and wikis etc.
      This author is claiming space for a more conventionally scientific evaluation of the existing business rhetoric. What he refers to as his 'refinement and analysis' of O'Reilly Media's principals, is a dissection into three broad characteristics of Web 2.0 applications, systematically broken down into 6 big ideas that he believes underpin the way Web 2.0 works. The three main aspects firstly cover what we recognise as the applications we use everyday - blogs, wikis, media-sharing services, for example Flickr, YouTube, and newer services such as MySpace, Facebook, Bebo, that constitute the 'surface' of Web 2.0. The framework secondly outlines the six big ideas that are: individual production and user-generated content; harnessing the power of the crowd; data on an epic scale; the architecture of participation; network effects; openness. Thirdly Anderson includes the Web technologies and standards - for example XML, AJAX, Flash etc - that allow ideas to be 'harnessed' in the social software applications of the surface. Anderson contributes brief examples of how these aspects are already working in libraries. However, he reiterates, as yet Librarians have not exercised the full potential of their professional skills in order to help shape how Web applications can be better utilised.
      The public sector ethos of librarians (IFLA , 2000) is mentioned by Anderson in relation to issues of privacy and copyright and as a sphere of influence able to be steered by librarians. An earlier paper 'New Communications Technology: A Survey of Impacts and Issues' (Marien, 1996) not included by Anderson, is a recommended source in this context for its breakdown of ethical and privacy issues that could contribute further to this discussion.
      This is not a text that argues all sides of the debate. Anderson does not comprehensively critique the applications and services referred to as the Web 2.0 platform, rather he accepts their authority (as a reality at least for what he calls western culture). Perhaps it would have been interesting to register comments made by one of the developers of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee to the effect that Web 2.0-type applications were always intended for the Web and that we are yet to unlock the capabilities of the Web (Berners-Lee, 2007).
      However to be fair, a more thorough analysis of the concepts that underpin Web 2.0, over and above the vested business interests (O'Reilly et al) that create and continue to advertise them, is what Anderson is calling for. His main argument is concerned with providing information so that librarians have the tools to better engage with such applications. Although this article applies a broad brush approach and does not specify types of libraries that the author wishes to assist, that is public libraries, academic and research libraries, government dept libraries etc, Anderson does provide a very specific outline of definitions for the ideas underpinning what we know as Web 2.0 and these can have broad application for information professionals in general.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berners-Lee, T. (2007). The Future of the Web. Testimony before the United States House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. (2007-03-01).

Casey, M., & Savastinuk, L. (2007). Library 2.0: A Guide to Participatory Library Service: N.J Medford.

Curran, K., Murray, M., Norrby, D., Martin, C. (2006). Involving the User through Library 2.0. New Review of Information Networking, 12(1), 47-59. IFLA. (2000). Guidelines for Professional Library/Information Educational Programs - 2000.

Marien, M. (1996). New Communication Technology: A Survey of Impacts and Issues. Telecommunications Policy, 20(5), 375-387.

Maness, J. (2006). Library 2.0 Theory: We 2.0 and Its Implications for Libraries. Webology, 3(2).

O'Reilly, T. (2005). What is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software. from http://tim.oreilly.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html


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