12th Entry - Presentation on Web 2.0 - Social Bookmarking

I did my presentation which is a mini case study. Search for information on the use of Web 2.0 technologies in a particular library from journal papers and present my findings in the class.My Topic is Social Bookmarking, example: CiteULink, Delicious.

Paper 1:
Social Bookmarking in Academic Libraries: Trends and Applications
By Carla S. Redden
Library Coordinator for Maysville Community and
Technical College. Recipient of a Masters in Library and Information
Science from the University of Kentucky School of Library and
Information Science

Paper 2:
Social Bookmarking for Scholarly Digital Libraries
By Umer Farooq,Yang Song, John M. Carroll,
and C. Lee Giles
Pennsylvania State University

Both papers are discussed on different aspect under social bookmarking.

1st Paper will examine:

• How some academic libraries have utilized and implemented social bookmarking
• The potential ways in which the Web 2.0 concept can increasingly become used to further support learning and
• Collaboration within and among libraries as well as exploring several issues and challenges libraries face in utilizing social tagging.
  

2nd Paper will examine:

• Exploration of the potential utilization of social bookmarking web sites by academic libraries.
• To create accounts for bookmarking online content, provide academic libraries tools to collaborate and network, organize and share electronic resources and teach information literacy.
• The authors use their analysis of a domain-specific social bookmarking service called CiteULike to reflect on two metrics for evaluating tagging behavior
• 1. tag growth- which assesses the addition of new tags to the overall tag vocabulary
• 2. Tag reuse- which looks at the recycling of existing tags.
• They examine the relationship between these two metrics and articulate design implications for enhancing social bookmarking services.
• How a social bookmarking service can encourage different levels of tag growth and reuse through design.
• They focus on social bookmarking services for scholarly communities in which users collectively organize and tag intellectual resources
  

Social Bookmarking

• Social bookmarking is the practice of Internet users identifying and labeling web pages for use later and has become a popular way for individuals to organize and share online resources.
• To create accounts and tag other sites or web pages.
• Allow librarians to tag and organize electronic resources in “private” mode until they are ready to roll out their tagged pages for users to discover.
• Librarians can make reference notes and give additional tips and guidance for students using particular links for their course-related research.
• It also called social tagging.
• “Social bookmarking tools as they relate to academe can have several purposes including:
• Organizing and categorizing web pages for efficient retrieval
• Keeping tagged pages accessible from any networked computer
• Integration of new social software tools and mashups to access tagged pages with RSS feeds
• Allowing librarians and instructors the capability to follow students’ progress; and giving students another way to collaborate with each other and make collective discoveries.”
  

Professional development and networking

• Social bookmarking can allow academic libraries to network and share appropriate scholarly web sites and work to develop cost-effective electronic resources for reference and curriculum support.
• Digital Library Federation provide gateways to subject guides and other university research resources that could be incorporated into social tagging projects.
• Librarians can tap into social bookmarking sites such as Delicious to find e-resources other libraries have discovered as well as librarians' blogs.
• Blogs provide a forum for academic librarians to discuss their experiences with Library 2.0.

Benefit of Social Bookmarking

• For libraries and educational institutions to allow users to save and rate bookmarks.
• Provides the capability for academic libraries to integrate their services with social networking site
• Allow information professionals to create subject guides and focused lists and projects and send those links to interested users
• Increasing research into these methods of knowledge organization
• To enhance OPACs, bibliographic instruction and reference,
• Resource sharing and personalized library services.
• Academic libraries should promote social bookmarking:
• Help students locate and use organized online resources
• Social tagging provides a means to break down communication barriers between libraries and students.
• Gives academic libraries a more prominent
• Faculty to better align online resources with coursework will also benefit students

Conclusion

• Through social bookmarking, libraries can collect resources for their users while also marketing their presence in an ever-growing online environment.
• Academic librarians may also seize opportunities to better offer web resources by collaborating with faculty and sorting out appropriate web sites or even finding innovative ways to create and tag content.
• Academic libraries can capitalize on these new tools and technological capabilities to reach their users in new and exciting ways.

11th Entry - Issues in Technology Implementation

As computers become more affordable and more and more students purchase their own, what impact does this have on library use? What impact do wireless access and the growing number of student-owned laptops have on library use? Students clearly prefer desktop delivery of information and if they have a personal networked computer, in their eyes they may have no need to come to the library - hence the decline in gate counts and reduced circulation of traditional library materials. Do differences in student ownership of computers and the bandwidth of the campus computing infrastructure account for the differences in trends among large and small libraries? Is the percentage of remote use of electronic resources and services influenced by the penetration of computing and network bandwidth of the campus?

Perhaps equipment configurations and replacement cycles are also a factor in library use. Why, for example, would students come to the library to retrieve electronic resources using obsolete equipment when their own computers are faster, better equipped to handle multimedia and loaded with all of the software they need to complete their assignments? Libraries typically restrict their public workstations to information retrieval tasks only, preferring students to go elsewhere to do email, word processing, programming, etc.

New technologies have always been of interest for libraries, both for the potential of increasing the quality of service and for improving efficiency of operations. The only barrier in the journey is high cost, but, “every new technology comes at a cost” (Ayre, 2006)

Key Factors in Technology implementation planning


There are five factors critical to effective library technology planning and implementation.
1) Support of library staff, including its management No planning effort will succeed without the full support and commitment of all library staff and management. This commitment should be made before starting a technology planning process.
2) Direct involvement by other parties The development of a technology plan should be undertaken not by library staff alone but with active participation by the libraries trustees and the involvement of other parties such as the local schools, the municipal/county IT department and the library system.
3) Service-based technology goals and initiatives A key factor in the use of any library technology is a realization that technology is not an end in itself but a means to an end. Technology must be viewed as a vehicle to offer more efficient and effective delivery of current services and to add new services to help carry out the mission of the library.
4) Staff development Too often, emphasis is placed on the hardware and software aspects of technology at the expense of staff training and in-servicing needed to help ensure proper and effective use of technology. Without a firm commitment to initial and continued staff development, the benefits of technology will not be fully realized.
5) Identification of funding and development of a budget Any technology plan must address the need for funds to implement the plan. Funds must be budgeted annually to maintain existing technology, to update or replace obsolete technology on a regularly scheduled basis, and to provide necessary staff support.

Objectives of technology implemented in libraries:

To improve student learning by providing students with seamless access to all learning resources
To improve student learning by enabling students to access the network(s) of information resources electronically on campus or at remote locations.
To improve student learning by making accessible to students a variety of shared databases to support the information needs of transfer, vocational, and professional programs.
To improve student learning by having a core and digital collection in each library this supports its instructional mission.

Impacts and Outcomes

Expanded access: remote and on site.
Supported by efficient library network infrastructure and systems at each college, students and faculty will be able to seamlessly access library resources that are available locally, through the world-wide web, or through interface with other college libraries at multiple locations on campus and at home.
Remote access of information resources also is critical for the success of distance learning programs.
Diversity of core resources and services, each college library will strive to provide a core level of diverse information resources and services to support instructional programs.
Enhancement of information competency effort, students' competency in accessing, evaluating and applying information from a variety of sources is one of the identified assessment outcomes of all the colleges.
The addition of new technology, systems and information resources in libraries will greatly improve the librarians teaching of information competency to students through formal and informal instruction. Improvement of connectivity and operational efficiency,
Upgraded library infrastructure and systems which are connected to the campus network and the K-20 network will not only make the library resources accessible from other locations on campus, but will also allow other college systems (e.g. student information) to be available in the library.
The new technologies will provide more efficient services to students as well as improve operational efficiency for the library (e.g., better response time and more accurate information).
Value-added quality services to students and faculty. A library outfitted with new technology and current resources is a necessity for any college because it is vital for the teaching and learning process.
A quality library will attract students, strengthen their success in learning, increase their satisfaction with the college learning environment, enhance the teaching-learning effort, and generally increase student retention rate.

As conclusion, there is a lot of issue’s in technology implemented but still there is solution of all. Librarian co-operation is highly needed in technology implementation even thou there is impacts. Librarian role is needed to improve student learning by providing students with seamless access to all learning resources. To improve student learning by enabling students to access the network(s) of information resources electronically on campus or at remote locations. To improve student learning by making accessible to students a variety of shared databases to support the information needs of transfer, vocational, and professional programs and to improve student learning by having a core and digital collection in each library this supports its instructional mission.

10th Entry- Discuss on the impact of Open Access Initiatives to libraries

Discuss on the impact of Open Access Initiatives to libraries

Shifting from the traditional model of scholarly communication to open access is a significant move, perhaps even a revolutionary one. There are numerous ways in which open access might impact an academic library:
Economic, technological, collection development & management, and the very roles that academic libraries play, reference services, information literacy, and peer evaluation.
Scenarios that would affect how open access impacts libraries:
(1) The open access movement collapses,
(2) The open access movement triumphs, and
(3) The open access movement partially succeeds, resulting in a mixed scholarly communication system that has elements of both traditional and open access publishing.

From my perspective, a complete failure of the open access movement seems unlikely. It appears to me that, at this point, the primary factors that will determine its degree of success are:
(1) Legislative, funding agency, employer and other mandates that require open access
(2) Sustainable business models for open access journals
(3) a commitment by universities and other organizations to establish, adequately fund, staff, and operate permanent digital repositories and archives; and
(4) A successful campaign to win the hearts and minds of scholars so that they will support (e.g., serve as editors and editorial board members) and publish in those journals, deposit e-prints in digital archives and repositories, and recognize the validity of open access publications in promotion and tenure proceedings.

Major Open Access Impacts on Libraries

• Institutions that decide to support open access via implementation of an institutional repository or creation of an electronic journal also face a number of technological issues. Links to electronic resources are already quite fragile, and it is common to find outdated, broken links even on reputable, well-updated websites.
• You would have the right to archive them forever without special permission or periodic payments. Long-term preservation and access would not be limited to the actions taken by publishers, with future market potential in mind, but could be supplemented by independent library actions. Cost -At some universities and colleges, publication charges are shouldered by the libraries which they may find such costs to be as expensive as those associated with traditional journal subscriptions
• Access and usage would not be limited by password, IP address, usage hours, institutional affiliation, physical location, a cap on simultaneous users, or ability to pay. You would not have to authenticate users or administer proxy servers.
• The most challenging issue facing those who develop and manage library collections is how they will keep track of open access sources. most academic libraries will need to confront the important issue of adding open access sources to their collections if they wish to serve their communities in the long-run, and indeed, if they wish to stay relevant
• You would have the right to lend and copy digital articles on any terms you liked to any users you liked. You could offer the same services to users affiliated with your institution, walk-in patrons, users at home, visiting faculty, and ILL users.
• Users who object to cookies or registration would have the same access privileges as other users. Anonymous inquiry would be possible again for every user.

The Role of Libraries in Open Access

Open access does not require that libraries do anything for it to exist. It has not been designed with libraries as its foundation. From this perspective, open access is all benefit, and no cost. For example, if a traditional journal becomes fully open access or a new open access journal fully substitutes for a conventional one, that is one less journal the library has to buy, and it can deploy those collection development funds elsewhere. If it was a double-digit-cost STM journal, all the better.
However, the probability those libraries, especially academic libraries, will simply ignore open access materials is quite low, if not zero. The lesson of other freely
available Internet resources is that, regardless of what libraries think, many users (especially undergraduates) love them and may well use them to the exclusion of conventional, vetted materials. Graduate students and faculty find riches in the Internet as well, and may be engaged in creating valuable new authoritative digital resources in that setting. Of course, they can distinguish between the real and the glass diamonds; less sophisticated users can't. So whether it was out of enthusiasm for new digital resources or out of a sense of obligation to steer users towards useful materials (or both), libraries have increasingly considered that vast sea of Internet materials to be a source of materials that are a potential part of a redefined collection, one that primarily includes purchased and licensed materials, but also, through inclusion in digital finding tools and instruction, free Internet materials.

Reference

Noorhidawati Abdullah. “Open Access ” Lecture, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur.

9th Entry - Discuss how open source and social software applications can serve to fill digital library roles

Features of the Open Source:

• Open source software is normally created and maintained by developers crossing institutional and national boundaries, collaborating by using internet-based communications and development tools

• Products are typically a kind of “free”, often through a license that specifies that applications and source code are free to use, modify, and redistribute as long as all uses, modifications, and redistributions are similarly licensed

• Successful applications are tend to be developed more quickly and with better responsiveness to the needs of users who can readily use and evaluate open source applications because they are free

• Social software lets libraries show a human face online, helping them communicate, educate, and interact with their communities. Provides librarians with the information and skills necessary to implement the most popular and effective social software technologies: blogs, RSS, wikis, social networking software, screen casting, photo-sharing, podcasting, instant messaging, gaming, and more

• Quality, not profit drives the open source developers who take personal pride in seeing their working solutions adopted.

• Social networking site are extremely popular across age groups and central forums for accessing and sharing information .librarian are responding to the popularity of social networking sites and their expanding role in the creation, use, and sharing of information by engaging them as a central medium for interacting with library patrons and providing services meet their information needs

• The social networking literate librarian is capable of articulating the nature and roles of online social networking site and their importance in scholarly research and communication and information cycle. Librarians should be familiar with a diversity of social networking site and social media including those most relevant it their patrons.

• Intellectual property rights to open source software belong to everyone who helps build it or simply uses it, not just the vendor or institution that created or the software

• Open-source software is computer software whose source code is available under a copyright license that permits users to study, change, and improve the software, and to redistribute it in modified or unmodified form. A source code consists of a set of instructions which are translated into binary codes so that the computer can understand the instructions. With the help of a source code of software a computer function. In case of the closed source programs such as Windows, oracle and etc. the source code is secret to the users. Whenever any problems appear the users have to depend upon the particular software developer to remove the problems.

Open source software used for building institutional repository

There are so many open source software with the application of which we can build IR. Every OSS has some special features and system requirements. The institute has to select the best OSS to be applied to build the IR of their institute. For checking which OSS will be more suitable for building the IR, they can go directly to the web address of the respective OSS and make a feasibility study, as they can be searched and used freely. Below a table is given where the developers, web address, system requirements and operating system of the different OSS are given

Conclusion

Open access movement is growing throughout the world and in the near future our imagination of availability of all information sources at a single point is definitely growing to be true. The institutional repository is no longer a concept. In Europe and USA the different project on IR had already started. In India also slowly setting up of IR has already started, especially by the leading academic institutions like IITs, IISc etc are coming forward. Traditionally, academicians usually publish the research outputs in their preferred print version of journals and presently some of the publisher is also bringing out simultaneously an electronic version of the same. But the publisher concerned in terms of subscription both again restricts the accessibility to such information for the individual as well as for the institution. Here the IR has opened up the most convenient, simple and democratic way to the students as well as the academicians to share and publish their research outputs.

References

1. http://www.opensource.org/

2. http://www.oss4lib.org

8th Entry - Discuss on how Open Source Integrated Library Systems affect library functions and librarian roles.

Libraries use computers to efficiently acquire, organize, retrieve, and disseminate information. OSS (open source system) has been developed to facilitate many library-related tasks such as cataloging photographs and managing bibliographies. An ILS is a database of a library collection and patron accounts, and the procedures acting on it. It may contain functional modules for cataloging, circulation, serials, acquisitions, statistical reports, patron accounts, and an online public access catalog (OPAC, i.e., catalog search engine).

Integrated refers to the ability of the system to share data among its modules. For example, the information to order a book may be entered in the acquisitions module, which may be used by the cataloging module, and searched via the OPAC. This integration reduces redundant data and effort. A synonym for ILS is library management system (LMS).

Libraries are concerned about cost because they often have more demands than resources, they are funded by their communities, and they have a responsibility to manage community funds wisely. If libraries can serve their communities’ needs at a lower cost by using OSS rather than proprietary software, it would be in their interest to adopt it. Minimally funded libraries, such as small libraries and libraries in rural areas and developing countries, may find OSS affordable. Library decision makers are concerned about the total cost of ownership of an ILS. This includes costs of installation, documentation, training, support, and maintenance.

After an ILS is selected, a library needs to protect its investment. If the vendor of a proprietary ILS goes out of business or discontinues support of a product, the library loses its investment of time and funds in the ILS, must choose a new ILS, retrain staff, and transfer catalog records to the new ILS. In contrast, a library using an open source

ILS may not have to do any of these things. If the support firm of an open source ILS ceases operation, the library must choose another source of support, but may have more than one option, including internal support. By using an open source ILS, a library may reduce its dependence on a vendor.

To meet the changing needs of users and to make use of new technologies, a library may wish to customize or upgrade its ILS. It is unknown how much significance libraries attach to customizability. If an ILS is proprietary, a library is prohibited from changing it and must ask the vendor to change it. If an ILS is open source, a library may change it or outsource the changes to a contractor of their choice.

Potential advantages of OSS are:

• Lower costs

• Customizability

• Portability

• Code peer review (if a large enough user base)

• Opportunity to contribute to ILS code base

• Flexibility in choosing a service contractor

Potential disadvantages are:

Which are especially applicable if the software has a small user base, include a lack of peer review, timely bug fixes, and support.

• Need for technological sophistication

• Higher labor costs

• Lack of scalability

• Fewer advanced features

The purpose of open information models is to increase access and decrease cost.

Open information models share values with freedom of information laws, public broadcast media, the American Library Association (ALA) code of ethics, and the original purpose of copyright law in the U.S. constitution. Barriers to information access are often due to economic conflicts with distributors who put profit before public access.

Even though open source ILS are available free, it is not ready to use. Many features in ILS are generalist and must be either customized before use or adjusted with existing features. Open source ILS available with standardized features majority of libraries required.

If technical expertise for installation and maintenance are available in the library itself, open source ILS is free from initial investment and other ongoing expenses. Otherwise, library has to hire technical support of software service provider for services such as installation, data migration and maintenance. Initial investment on open source ILS is probably less than the annual maintenance of commercial ILS. Many libraries simply do not have the in-house expertise to support open source software development, and also don’t have the ability to train staff on the use of the new technologies. Libraries should make a good home work before the adoption of open source library management system.

Lack of awareness and knowledge in open source technology and software among library professionals restrict widely adoption of open source ILS in libraries.

The software license fees represent only one component of the overall costs that a library bears in its automation effort. The personnel required for the initial implementation and system administration is a major consideration.

Conclusion

Impact of open source movement made positive effects in libraries. Library professionals are recognizing the impact of open source software’s and began to adapt in library automation purposes. Open source culture empowers libraries to try innovative technologies in their working environment.

In addition, libraries have started to develop their own tools such as Meta search and social functionality tools to integrate with open source ILS. This practice helps them to develop solutions to solve their technology related problem within the walls of libraries.

In a certain extent, open source library management system help to solve common problems faced by libraries such as fewer budgets for proprietary ILS, management of increasing number of records, large number of members, and lack of powerful administration over all modules in library.

Open source library management systems provide access to library-owned data and provide much more flexibility for your library than commercial ILS .It is necessary to make awareness among library professionals about the advantages of open source software’s. Then only libraries can attain tremendous savings on library automation and to achieve increase in performance at the same time.

Reference:

M. Riewe, L. (2008). SURVEY OF OPEN SOURCE INTEGRATED LIBRARY SYSTEMS (Master's thesis). August

V, V., & Abraham, T. Eight Things you should Know about Open Source Integrated Library Systems. .