I’ve been busy busy busy recently – academic librarians always seem to have so much they hope to achieve in summer and then you blink and suddenly it’s almost time for the students to return!

Anyway, just a short post to share some exciting news – my first peer reviewed article has been published in Program.

I mentioned a while ago that I had contributed to a paper for Bridging Worlds 2008 conference, and Program have run a special edition featuring selected papers from the conference. It seems like such a long time ago when I first wrote my contribution (almost a year ago now – just shows how long the publication process can take!) but it’s really exciting to have my name in print in such a great publication.

Brian Kelly from UKOLN was the main author of the paper, which examines the use of Library 2.0 in different types of libraries (national library, research library, and university library – my contribution) and outlines a risk management approach to minimise potential risks whilst gaining the benefits of Library 2.0 initiatives.

The full reference is:

Kelly, B., Bevan, P., Akerman, R., Alcock, J., and Fraser, J. (2009) Library 2.0: balancing the risks and benefits to maximise the dividends. Program: Electronic Library & Information Systems, 43 (3), pp. 311-327.

You can read a copy in Program, or you can view a copy at University of Bath’s repository.

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Library 2.0 mashup using tags in delicious.com

Following on from a blog post at CILIP’s Library and Information Update blog about a resource produced using tags in delicious, the Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills have re-purposed their initial digitalgovuk mashup and produced a library2.0 resources mashup.

The mashup uses delicious (for the resources), SimplePie (to handle the RSS feed), and Thumbshots (to create the screenshots). The page is automatically updated with anything tagged in delicious with the term library2.0.

I like this idea as a way to present similar resources, although apart from a pretty page it doesn’t add very much functionality to the standard RSS feed you could subscribe to directly from delicious. It would be good if this sort of idea could be developed further to add more features (such as ratings maybe, or rankings for more popular items, or comment ability for each resource, or further categorisation using associated tags). Only the tags at the top of the page in the tag cloud are dynamic, it would be nice if the tags underneath each item were also (I tried to click on one so I’m imagining other people may do the same).

Another issue with this is that there are currently over 70,000 items tagged with the term library2.0 in delicious, many of which may not be relevant; it’s just too general a tag to gain the most from this in my opinion. The concept is good though, and I can certainly see how this sort of thing could be useful when using more specific tags for sharing specific resources.

Kudos to the DIUS Social Media team!

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