The last national library in this series is the National Library of New Zealand. My experience with their homepage was different from that with any of the other libraries. It was confusing, the homepage did not seem to have links to any of the Web 2.0 related tools that we have been evaluating. In fact, there are not even unclear, or hidden links to be found.
screenshot of National Library of New Zealand homepage
Next up is the National Archives of Australia (NAA) website. Here, the Web 2.0 tools are very easy to spot. Right on the homepage, at the top of their news feed, the latest update (at the time of this post) read
“We’re now on Twitter”.
Follow us on twitter at @naagovau-just in time for #followanarchive. And share the good news with a retweet.
Screenshot of part of the homepage
On the other side of the page there is a different coloured box (easy to spot!) that has a heading: “Catch us on…” with links to Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube and Vimeo. Again, none of them open in a new window (really, is this so hard to do?)
The NAA’s Facebook profile seems to be regularly updated with news, events, and exhibitions. There seems to be a good amount of community involvement on this page, with people posting interesting titbits and asking questions on the Facebook ‘wall’. They have made an attempt to integrate Flickr into this profile, by adding an application to their profile that integrates Flickr. They have however not set this up correctly, so you can only see one photo. A missed chance, since they have many interesting photos on their Flickr page! Continue reading
Even though the Library of Congress is not really the national library of the U.S., it functions enough like one that we can include it in our exploration of national libraries and Web 2.0.
I had a bit of trouble trying to find out what kind of tools the Library of Congress has integrated into their website.
Screenshot of Library of Congress homepage
Library and Archives Canada has several social bookmarking tools integrated on their homepage, clearly visible at the bottom of the page. They have listed them under the heading: social tagging, and have added a link to a page that explains what social tagging is. On this page they explain what social tagging is, what a tag is, how social tagging works (including the fact that you have to first create a personal account), and where some social tagging tools can be found. It also includes a link to a Wikipedia’s list of tools for social bookmarking. Again, the links lead you to a new page, without a separate window opening, very annoying.
Screenshot of part of the home page
The first national library that we will look at is the British Library. When we investigate their homepage, we see that none of their Web 2.0 tools are visible on that page. The tabs available are called ‘quick links’ ‘what’s on’ ‘site highlights’ and ‘your library’. The home page seems to be mainly a search box. The ‘quick links’ does not have a quick link to the 2.0 tools.
Screenshot of the homepage
The tab ‘Your library’, however, turns out to have everything that we are looking for. There are icons for Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, Audioboo, and Bravo/tripadvisor. Next to that there is a list of other options, among which ‘Read our blogs’, ‘Listen to our podcasts’, “Find us on Facebook”, and “See us on Flickr”. The tools are not hard to find if you already know that they exist and that libraries might be using them, but they are not so visible that they seem to be a priority for the library. I always find that throwing all these links together on one page makes them seem like they have been put there as an afterthought. As if one enthusiastic employee one day ran into the director’s office and exclaimed that “the library should participate in these new exciting things!”, and in reaction they just threw all these links on their website. Continue reading
This series of blog posts is intended to investigate and evaluate the use of Web 2.0 tools and services by several national libraries. Before I do that however, I would like to have a look at some of the meanings and interpretations of Web 2.0.
Our all-knowing oracle Wikipedia, itself a prime example of Web 2.0, defines it as follows:
The term Web 2.0 is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. A Web 2.0 site gives its users the free choice to interact or collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators (prosumers) of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where users (consumers) are limited to the passive viewing of content that was created for them.
Web 2.0 is therefore a thoroughly social phenomenon, and Howard Rosenbaum describes this, in a way that particularly appeals to me, as The Architecture of Participation. Continue reading
BiblioPluis 