UKSG, HarrogateApril 2011

Image: Jenser (Clasix-Design) @ Flickr

Open, social and linked

A ménage à trois of content exploitation

Andy Powell, Eduservwww.eduserv.org.uk/research

twitter.com/andypowe11

Overview/ will argue that we have tended to underplay the importance of social

networks in our provision of library and academic publishing services

/ and, in fact, in the development of digital library services more generally

/ and that emphasis on providing open and linked content provides platform for social

activity

Image: Niecieden @ Flickr

Attitude

/ our behaviour is being changed/ the web is now a social construct/ research and learning are social activities/ ditto cultural heritage

Image: still from The Machine is Us/ing Us by Michael Wesch

residents vs. visitors

/ a visitor is “an individual who uses the web as a tool in an organised manner whenever the need

arises”/ a resident is “an individual who lives a percentage

of their life online”David White, University of Oxford – TALL Blog

/ note: attitude rather than capability/ in digital libraries, we have tended to focus on

visitors

Image: bartmaguire @ Flickr

channels vs. platforms

/ content should be ‘of’ the web rather than ‘on’ the web/ huh? what does that mean?/ again, it’s about attitude/ an expectation of re-use/ think platform rather than channel

Image: akhr1961 @ Flickr

In digital libraries…

/ in digital librarieswe have a long (and pre-digital) heritage

/ we tend to focus on contentand descriptions of content

/ and moving collections of those descriptions

from providers to consumers/ such that they can be searched and

browsedor otherwise displayed to individuals

Image: spike55151 @ Flickr

Standards

/ we’re quite good at standards…/ particularly those that focus on metadata (MARC, MODS, DC, ORE, etc.)/ and identifiers for the content/ and protocols (OAI-PMH, Z39.50, SRW, etc.)/ and OpenURL, …

Image: BEUTELTIERE @ Flickr

Access control/ because some (most?) content has not been freely availablewe also focus on access control/ standards like SAML/ software like Shibboleth or OpenAthens

Image: spodzone @ Flickr

People and identityImage: Jenser (Clasix-Design) @ Flickr

/ commonly still a focus on one-way flow of information

/ increasing interest in relationshipsbetween stuff and people

/ but usually with a content-centric view/ still little real interest in relationships between

people/ which means that ‘identity’ issues normally focus

on“that is you, that is what you are allowed to do”

/ whereas on the social web, the emphasis is different

“this is me, this is what I’ve done”

Openness aside (1)

/ being open is all about enabling re-use/ cultural conditions for openness don’t emerge

overnight/ as we are finding with learning objects,

research papersand probably data

Image: dullhunk @ Flickr

Openness aside (1)/ UKRDS survey of staff

representing 700 researchers (2009)...

/ 43% expressed need to see other’s research data/ most share data in some

form (informally with peers)/ but only 12% share via

existing formal data centres

Image: tk-link @ Flickr

Openness aside (2)/ need to distinguish ‘open’ from ‘free’/ aspects of Amazon service are ‘open’ but content paid-for/ contrast with current difficulty determining which e-books are made available by which publishers

http://ebookfinder.labs.eduserv.org.uk

The social web

/ typical characteristics of social websites/ concentration and diffusion

Lorcan Dempsey, OCLC Lorcan Dempsey’s Blog

/ exposure at the item level/ focus on social interaction - both within the network and across other networks

Contrast with repositories/ contrast with repository activity

/ mis-match between repository architecture and real-world social networks

/ emphasis on ‘shelving’ content rather than social behaviour

/ uncompelling value offer to end-users/ result… the need for mandates to fill what would

otherwise remain empty

Image: timtom.ch @ Flickr

Linked Data/ Linked Data…1. use URIs as names for things.2. use HTTP URIs, so that people can look

up those names3. when someone looks up a URI, provide

useful information, using the standards (RDF, SPARQL)

4. include links to other URIs, so that they can discover more things

/ point 2 brings greatest value/ modelling issues make realisation of the promise some way off

Image: Zach Klein @ Flickr

Facebook ‘like’ button

/ Facebook ‘like’ button provides interesting case in point

/ underpinned by snippet of Linked Data (using the Open Graph Protocol)

/ but emphasis is on building social capital rather than the technology

/ arguably, value comes more from use of ‘http’ URI than from use of RDF

ConclusionsConclusions/ if the web teaches us one thing, it is the power of the http URI and links based on it/ openness and linkedness provide a platform for social interaction/ but are not sufficient on their own/ increasingly need to understand the social activity of our users, particularly resident behaviours, and think platform rather than channel