The Rise and Fall of Apache?

The Data

It can difficult to know how to respond when the evidence fails to support one’s beliefs. What then, should one make of the recent figures from Netcraft’s March 2008 Web Server Survey which show that figures for usage of the Apache Web server software peaked in 2005 and the decline since then has been matched with a corresponding rise in use of Microsoft’s Web server software?

Using The Data To Unearth Preconceived Ideas

I used this image, incidentally, in an online presentation yesterday, but without the companies’ names being displayed. In response to my question “Which company do you think seems to be in decline?” the answers suggested included Facebook, Twitter and Blackboard - all companies which various participants in the conference had negative views on.

Discussion

In professions such as politics or in the commercial sector we might expect inconvenient data to be conveniently ignored (says me cynically!). In higher education, however, we pride ourselves on developing theories to fit the facts and not finding facts to fit our beliefs (says me in a rather arrogant fashion!). Or do we? I can’t help but feel that in IT we have a whole series of beliefs and find it difficult to know how to respond when the evidence challenges such beliefs. Indeed I’ve commented on this previously: we haven’t embraced the open source FireFox browser to the extent which had been expected when the browser was released; conformance with the WAI accessibility guidelines doesn’t necessarily bring about universal accessibility and open standards sometimes don’t work. The IT profession needs, in my opinion, to be more sceptical about its beliefs and to gather evidence to demonstrate, or refute, such beliefs.

Returning To The Data

But what, I wonder, can we make of the growth in Microsoft’s Web server software? And, perhaps more intriguingly, what should we make of Google’s entry into the chart in July 2007?

One World, One Web … But Great Diversity

Yesterday I presented a paper on “One World, One Web … But Great Diversity” at the W4A 2008 conference  which was being held in Beijing. After the presentation and responding to the questions I received I went to the Claverton rooms at the University of Bath for coffee with my colleagues.

For the first time I presented a peer-reviewed paper which I had previously recorded and made available on my Web site and also via Google Video. The 22 minute long video was played at the conference and I was available to respond to questions via a Skype connection with the conference chair, David Sloan.

This was a very valuable learning experience. My previous use of video to give a presentation was at the UCISA 2008 Managment Conference, where Andy Powell was available to complement my introduction with his live participation at the conference. On both occasions I’ve found that my talk has sounded ‘flat’ without the feedback one gets from presenting to a live audience.  Perhaps the next time I do this I should record a talk I give to a live local audience. But at least I saved an estimated 2.9 tonnes of carbon emissions and was able to get back to pressing items of work after the presentation.

The paper build on previous papers on accessibility, and explored how the holistic approach to Web accessibility we have developed previously can be applied in a Web 2.0 context. The paper arguing the need for a user-centred approach to Web accessibility, rather the the resource-centred approach which is the underlying basis for the accessibility guidelines developed by WAI.  

Your comments are welcomed.

The Guardian’s “Libraries of the Future” Supplement

Lorcan Demepsey has picked on on a post in the eFoundation’s blog about the “Libraries of the Future” Supplement in today’s Guardian. And it’s good to have the article in the supplement available online.

The thing I find interesting about the first page is how the JISC-funded report on Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Futureis being interpretted.  The introduction to the supplement begins with a statement that the report “found young people lacking in critical and analytical skills“. And the main article on the first page entitled “Information alert” has the byline “A recent survey shows many students from the so-called ‘Google generation’ lack the basic skills needed for online research“.

What are we to make of this? Clearly we (the information professionals, the institutions, the policy makers) need to take action to address the deficiencies of our students.

But if you read on you’ll find that the report says “From undergraduates to professors, people exhibit a strong tendency towards shallow, horizontal, flicking behaviour in digital libraries. Factors specific to the individual, personality and background are much more significant than generation.“. 

Now this presents a very different picture, I feel. Indeed that headline to the supplement could equally have read “the report has found that researchers, academics and lecturing staff are lacking in critical and analytical skills“. 

But does surfing of Web sites and an emphasis on Google for searching necessarily demonstrate a lack of critical and analytic skills? I myself use Google many times a day. Recently I used it to find hotels prior to travelling to conferences in Taiwan and Montreal.  I used Google to find hotel bookings sites and Google maps to find hotels close to the conference venue. And, for my first trip, once I’d found a possible hotel I used the Google Taiwan search engine to find other ways of accessing the information - and discovered I could get the hotel for a cheaper rate using a local company rather than the US-based Web site. Before booking the hotel I, of course, checked that a secure connection was being used.

We should all be developing skills in using search engines such as Google and in interpretting the results we find, as the vast majority of us will turn to the Web to support our social activities, personal finances, etc. And to suggest that a quality, peer-reviewed and safe environment will solve all of our needs is clearly wrong.

The Guardian supplement includes article on “Quiet revolution” (a heading based on a library cliche suggests Phil Bradley) Dame Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library says regarding your scholars  ”Their ease with computers and technology hides the reality of their information literacy skills: lacking analytical, effective search strategies, they rely on simple solutions for their study needs - parking their critical faculties.“ 

I would agree with this. Rather than focussing on the building of alternative services,  there’s a need to develop and implement new media literacy strategies - and the new services that we will be building shouldn’t be regarded as providing alternatives, but providing complementing services aimed, perhaps, at niche areas. And let’s remember the growing body of evidence which suggest that users seem to prefer simple search interfaces - a recent post by Jennifer Trant comments on this from the perspective of searching museums’ collections.

It is also important to remember that new media literacy strategies need to address the professors, researchers and policy makers and not just the students. And this provides me with a timely opportunity to mention a book on “Information Literacy Meets Library 2.0” edited by Peter Godwin and Jo Parker. I should add that I contributed a chapter to this book (on Web 2.0 Tools). However the hard work was down to Peter and Jo, and the fellow contributors who provided a range of case studies illustrating a wide variety of approaches to information literacy which are being taken using Web 2.0 tools.

Should We “Leave Search To Google?”

When I chaired the session on Search at the Museums and the Web 2008 conference the discussion, as I described in a recent post, turned to lightweight approaches to federated searching. During the session I received a Twitter comment on my feedback channel (intermingled with the football scores!) asking “is it more useful to develop compelling browse interfaces & leave search to Google?” The response at the time seemed to be that although Google might have a role to play in the future, its role at present is limited (in a museums’ context) due to the complexities of typical collections management Web interfaces: the valuable data is part of the ‘deep Web’ which search engines such as Google find difficult to index.

But just a few day’s ago, via a comment made by Nate Solas on his blog post about the Search session, I discovered that Google have announced their intention to index the deep Web:

This experiment is part of Google’s broader effort to increase its coverage of the web. In fact, HTML forms have long been thought to be the gateway to large volumes of data beyond the normal scope of search engines. The terms Deep Web, Hidden Web, or Invisible Web have been used collectively to refer to such content that has so far been invisible to search engine users. By crawling using HTML forms (and abiding by robots.txt), we are able to lead search engine users to documents that would otherwise not be easily found in search engines, and provide webmasters and users alike with a better and more comprehensive search experience.

Mia Ridge has commented on the implications of this announcement:

You’re probably already well indexed if you have a browsable interface that leads to every single one of your collection records and images and whatever; but if you’ve got any content that was hidden behind a search form (and I know we have some in older sites), this could give it much greater visibility.

In light of Google’s announcement it is timely, I would think, to revisit the question “It is it more useful to develop compelling browse interfaces & leave search to Google?” Imagine the quality of services we could provide if we redirect resources from replicating search algorithms which have already been developed (”standing on the shoulders of giants”).

And let’s remember (a) the evidence which suggests that users prefer simple search interfaces and (b) the costs of attempting to compete with Google in the search area - let’s not forget that, despite their riches, Microsoft haven’t been able to compete successfully. Is it likely that search technologies developed by tax-payers’ money will succeed where Microsoft have failed?

PS I should probably add that I’m not the first to suggest this idea. The OpenDOAR team, in particular have deployed a search interface using Google across institutional repository services. Many congratulations to the team at the University of Nottingham for evaluating this lightweight approach.

Twitter? It’s An Interactive Business Card

The Background

I was talking to Gwen van der Velden, head of the Director of Learning and Teaching Enhancement at the University of Bath recently. We spoke about the evaluation of Twitter that Andy Ramsden is currently engaged in with his colleagues in the e-learning unit. Gwen asked me for my views of how Twitter could be used and, in light of my recent trips to conferences, I described it as an ‘interactive business card’.  When you go to a conference you’ll often exchange business cards with people you meet. But when you get back to work you’ll probably find (well I do anyway!) that you can’t remember whose card it was or what you have intended to get back to them about - and if this has happened to you before, you might have decided to scribble a note on the card; so now you have the additional task of decyphering the scrawl written late at night in the bar after the conference reception!

Exploring The Analogy

Exchanging Twitter IDs enables you to receive an informal stream of information which can help you to develop a better context for any follow-up activities.  And if you decide you are not interested, you can remove the Twittier address from the people you follow - the equivalent, perhaps, of tearing up a business card.

I noticed a good example of this when I returned home after my chat with Gwen and read a tweet from ‘homebrewer’ which said:

@briankelly It’s free for reuse, but I haven’t put a license on it yet: http://tinyurl.com/5b7fbf

This was in response to a tweet from me after I spotted this tweet from homebrewer:

Dusting off my Google Analytics talk for this afternoon - should have kept my presentation notes from last time… about 6 hours ago from web

I had asked:

@homebrewer is your Google ANl;ytics talk avilable online? And is there a CC licence for reuse :-)

This to me provided a good example of the benefits of swapping Twitter IDs at conferences and the benefits of micro-blogging your work activities. Now the business card analogy is meant to refer to just one use case for twittering which works for me. Does it for you? And how might you apply this use case?

Applying The Analogy

How about creating a Twitter account before you go to a conference which you pass on to people you connect with? Then use the account during the conference to summarise your thoughts on the talks and provide some brief reflections when you return to work. This can then provide an ‘in’ for the contacts you’ve made - and there’s no need to sustain the micro-blogging or to worry about micro-blogging the minutae of your daily activities.

Why not give it a try - what’s there to lose?

Facebook Or Twitter - Or Facebook And Twitter

In the opening planary talk on Hands On The Internet at the Museums and the Web 2008 conference Michael Geist mentioned the popularity of Facebook in Canada - apparently Canada has the highigest per capita Facebook usage in the world. And, as described in a blog post on the talk by arkrausehardie Michael described the “enormous pressure a sort of flash-mob FaceBook group can bring to bare (sic!) on public policy such as the recent group started by Geist on copyright issues in Canada, now with more than 40,000 members“.

The interest in the potential of Facebook for engaging with a museum’s user community was described in a number of papers at the conference. For example Shelley Bernstein’s paper on “Where Do We Go From Here? Continuting with Web 2.0 at Brooklyn Museum” dscribed the ArtShare Facebook application they had developed to “share works of art from Museums around the world“. And a paper by Brian Kelly and colleagues at the Canada Science and Technology Museum on “Social Presence: New Value For Museums And Networked Audiences“  described “specific experiments with social media, including a detailed analysis of a Facebook group used by the Canada Science and Technology Museum Corporation’s Membership Program“. In addition the paper described “two theoretical models – the “Innovation Radar” and genre analysis – to help analyze the nature of the opportunities for innovation, and to develop a better understanding of the distinctive characteristics of alternate communication channels“.

And yet in some circle such use of Facebook is being derided with comments such as “It’s a closed garden“, “Its popularity is on the wane” or “Twitter is a better development environment” being made. I have to say that I foind that such comments tend to miss the point.  A recent post on “The Becoming Uninteresting Complex - Facebook versus Twitter” commented on the “pretty irrational questionings like “is Twitter replacing Facebook?“, Twitter doesn’t allow socialization. It simply allow instant interactions“.

And as can be seen from a SIteanalytics snapshot which compares usage of Facebook and Twitter,  it you want to make inappropriate comparisons, it’s Twitter which fares badly.

Making these points, I should add that we shouldn’t explore the potential of Facebook uncritically. But the early adopters do acknowledge some of the concerns which need to be recogonised. Dawson et al have commented that “There are, however, a variety of potential pitfalls with social networking sites. One concern is whether such sites are a fad or flash in the pan“. The paper goes on to add “Issues of privacy are another important factor. Users of social networking sites appear to be willing to live with great compromises in their privacy. However, even these broad boundaries have been tested a number of times. Facebook, for example, has risked alienating its users in controversies such as the introduction of the news feed in 2006 (boyd, 2006a), and the more recent introduction of the “Beacon” in 2007 (Hirsh, 2007).“

So let’s be realistic and continue the experoimentation and debate. But let’s also be critical of our preferred environments.  And although I’m a happy user of Twitter and participated in its use at MW2008, looking at the hashtag data for the mw2008 tag I would acknolwsdge that it was used primarily by a small group who knew each other - and indeed went out drinking together.  Twitter can be useful for some - but it’s not neccessarily the killer application for everybody.

The Search Session At MW 2008

On the final day of the Museums and the Web 2008 conference (Saturday !) I chaired a session on Search. There were only two papers presented at this session - and as the session was scheduled to last from 11.00-12.30 both of the speakers were happy for the session to provide an opportunity for general discussions after the papers had been presented.

Terry Makewell ’s paper was entitled “The National Museums Online Learning Project Federated Collections Search: Searching Across Museum And Gallery Collections In An Integrated Fashion“. As described in a blog post by Nate Solas, the paper described the approaches to federated search being taken by 9 partner organisations in the UK. The two search technologies described were  OAI/PMH and Opensearch - and a decision was made to use Opensearch, due to its simplicity, the short timescales and the limited technical expertise and resources available by some of the partners.

Following Terry’s talk Johan Møhlenfeldt Jensen, Museum of Copenhagen, Denmark presented a paper on “Approaches To Presentation Of Cultural Heritage Information In The ALM-Area In Denmark And Scandinavia“. This paper complemented Terry’s paper nicely, and highlighted some of the challenges posed by federated search including the differing cultures across the archives, libraries and museums domains and the differing cultures across the Scandinavian countries.

The discussions afterwards focussed on whether a simple approach to federated search would be sufficient. Mike Ellis asked Terry whether used of Google search technologies, such as Google Coop, had been considered. It seems it had, but ruled out due to the complexities posed  by use of session IDs on some of the collections. In a subsequent tweet on the Twitter back-channel Mike pointed out his experimentation with Google Coop across a number of museums - and this was briefly tested by the two speakers after the session had concluded (as an aside I should note that this was the only relevant Tweet received during the session - however Terry and I were also interested in the football scores which I receive on  my Twitter account, including the flurry of goals conceded by Derby County!) .

The discussion on simplicity versus sophistication led to discussions on the user experience. Following a question on evidence of use of advanced search capabilities, data from an Australian example showed that a very low percentage of users (1%, I think) accessed an advance serach capability - and, indeed, most users submitted only a single search term!  I pointed out that the importance of simple interfaces was likely to grow as use of mobile devices became more popular - a comment that was particularly pertinent to the MW 2008 conference, as the WiFi access problems conference delegates had experienced the presviopus day were apparently due to the large numbers of network users who were using an iPhone or Nokia N95.

There was a feeling, I think, that federated search may, in the future, be provided by mainstream commodity products - and, indeed, as collections management tools evolve and start to provide static URIs, the benefits of solutions such as Google Coop may become even more apparent.

Will there, I wonder, be a session on federated search at future MW conferences or will this area be, like institutional search, be addressed by mainstream solutions?

 

Reflecting On Openness and the Semantic Web

The printed copy of the proceedings of the Museums and the Web 2008 conference divides the papers into four sections: Institutions, User Participation, Web Space and Reflecting. The concluding section, on Reflecting, contains only two papers: one on Semantic Dissonance: Do We Need (And Do We Understand) The Semantics Web? by Ross Parry (University of Leicester), Nick Poole (The Collections Trust) and Jon Pratty (Culture 24) and my paper on What Does Openness Mean To The Museum Community?, co-authored by Mike Ellis (Eduserv) and Ross Gardler (JISC OSS Watch), which I’ve posted about recently.

It is pleasing that the two papers which reflect on the challenges and opportunities posed by recent Web developments have been written by a combination of researchers and practitioners based in the UK.

Ross Parry’s paper is based on a series of workshops funded by the AHRC which were held at various locations in the UK during 2006 and 2007. The paper describes discussions which have taken place recently in the UK in which it has been suggested that “museum data with good URIs, consistent metadata and simple tagging are seen to provide a vitally stable infrastructure on which to build“.

To this list I would add the importance of providing data which is free from restrictive licence conditions and which is exposed for reuse by other applications which can exploit the rich semantic data.

But stable URIs, consistent metadata, simple tagging, open data and machine interfaces - isn’t this what Web 2.0 is about? From one perspective, people may regard Web 2.0 as shorthand for referring to blog, wiki and RSS applications. But Tim O’Reilly’s original Web 2.0 diagram makes it clear that Web 2.0 is broader than this.

In a chapter entitled ‘‘If it quacks like a duck…’ - developments in search technologies‘ in a recent Becta Research Report on Emerging Technologies for Learning Volume 3 (2008) (PDF version of chapter) my colleague Emma Tonkin argues that:

By “semantic”, Berners-Lee means nothing more than “machine processable”. The choice of nomenclature is a primary cause of confusion on both sides of the debate. It is unfortunate that the effort was not named “the machine processable web” instead.

I think Emma is right: the term Semantic Web has caused much confusion. But if the Semantic Web is really a machine processable Web in which clean URIs can help to provide programatic access to structured data, then isn’t this very close to what Web 2.0 may be considered to be about?

And can you claim to be in favour of the Semantic Web if you are critical of the architectural aspects of Web 2.0? Or, to put it another way, isn’t engagement with Web 2.0 a needed stepping stone towards the Semantic Web? And won’t we find that those who come out with reasons for not engaging with Web 2.0, will come out with a similar set of reasons for not engaging with the Semantic Web?

What Does Openness Mean To Your Community?

Myself, Mike Ellis (Eduserv) and Ross Gardler (JISC OSS Watch) are the co-authors of a paper on “What Does Openness Mean To The Museum Community?” which has been accepted for the Museums and the Web 2008 conference. And I’m pleased that David Bearman (conference co-chair) response when he read the paper was that it should be discussed in a Professional Forum at the conference. Indeed David’s comment on the paper was “it sounds like it could be the most amazing session at MW this year” :-)

The paper suggests that openness can include open standards, open source, open APIs, open access and an open culture (i.e. a willingess to encourage user-generated content). But the paper also acknowledges that there is a downside to each of these aspects. Some of these concerns were raised by Nick Poole, Chief Executive of the MDA in a thread on “The speculative aspect of using Web 2″ on the MCG JISCMail list. Nick commented:

… ‘how can you be so naïve’? Low cost of entry? We were promised that with Open Source Software and it turned out to be no cheaper. Reaching audiences while we sleep? They told us Z39.50 and interoperability would solve that and we’re still not there. Content Management will make everyone a publisher? You just try and get a username and password out of the Council IT Admin.

I’m pleased that Nick raised such concerns. He’s right when he suggests that the potential benefits of both open source and open standards have been over-hyped. And, similarly, the benefits of Web 2.0 can also be exaggerated. But my response to the concerns raised by Nick are to argue that we need to develop more sophisticated ways of engaging with these aspects of openness - and just because policy makers appear to feel that simply mandating use of open standards and open source software will be sufficient to deliver their benefits, doesn’t mean we are faced with the binary choice of accepting or rejecting such views. Rather we need to engage in discussions and debate on ways in which real benefits can be realised.

I’ve been involved in working collaboratively with others in developing models for exploiting the potential of open standards and open source software. At the Museums and the Web 2.007 conference I presented a paper on Addressing The Limitations Of Open Standards, co-authored with my colleague Marieke Guy and Alastair Dunning (then of AHDS). These ideas were further developed and extended to include open source and an open access in a paper on Openness in Higher Education: Open Source, Open Standards, Open Access co-authored by Scott Wilson (JISC CETIS) and Randy Metcalfe (then of JISC OSS Watch).

But there’s a need to build on these approaches and to develop approaches for exploiting other aspects of openness. And such approaches need to recognise the dangers and difficulties. But just because there are difficulties, doesn’t mean we should reject openness - rather it means we need to continue having the debate, whether it’s on mailing list such as the MCG list, on this blog or at the professional forum at the Museums and The Web 2008 conference. So I’ll ask here the questions w’ll be discussing in a few day’s time: what does openness mean to your community, what are the benefits it can provide, what are difficulties which are likely to be faced and, most importantly, how do you feel such difficulties should be overcome.

Your feedback is warmly welcomed.

Micro-blogging At Events

Background

I can recall attending the UCISA 2004 conference and listening to a speaker describing the problems caused by providing free laser printing services to student. It seems students made heavy use of the service and this caused particular problems at the end of term: the print queues would be full, so students would resubmit jobs, compounding the problems.

But this is nothing new, I felt. I wanted to chat with my former manager at Loughborough University and ask him if we hadn’t addressed this problem back in the late 1980s. But he was near the front of the lecture theatre and I was near the back. Wouldn’t it be great, I thought, if we could exploit the WiFi networks which were starting to appear, and have such discussions during a talk - this could help to improve the quality of the questions I felt.

Since then I have explored various ways of providing chat channels at events. At the Institutional Web Management Workshop 2005 held at the University of Manchester we made use of an IRC channel - on which the small numbers of IRC users heard about the 7/7 London bombings prior to the rest of the audience: the logs of the IRC chat makes interesting reading from a historical perspective:

Jul 07 11:09:30 <SebastianRahtz>scary stuff with bombs. not impossible mchester next? …
Jul 07 11:19:54 <AndrewSavory>Sebastian: Swindon and Brighton rail stations shut
Jul 07 11:19:59 <EmTonkin>oh
Jul 07 11:20:00 <AndrewSavory>all central london bus services stopped

Various chat tools were used at subsequent events, including Jabber and the Gabbly service. But since last year the term ‘micro-blogging’ has come into vogue and I’ve an interest in exploring the potential of Twitter in a conference setting, especially as I’ve been making regular use of Twitter for some time now.

Recent Experiments

My initial experiments took place when I attended the NDAP 2008 conference in Taiwan. However my use of Twitter (sometimes summarising individual slides) caused problems for my Twitter ‘followers’, some of whom commented that their Twitter client was full of my photos of my portrait when they logged on in the morning and others found that having my Tweets being delivered on their mobile phone resulted in a continual stream of SMS alerts.

Following a suggestion from James Clay, I then tried the Jaiku service. I’d tried this before, but this time I installed a dedicated Jaiku client and, with some help from James, set up the #ndap2008 channel which was dedicated to the conference. However, despite its richness as a micro-blogging and aggregation tool, Jaiku hasn’t really taken off - and as the most important aspect of a social networking tool is the social network, I reluctantly decided that Jaiku wouldn’t be the tool to use.

The Social Dimension Of Micro-Blogging At Events

The fact that the numbers of posts (tweets) I sent on the first day of he NDAP 2008 conference irritated a couple of my Twitter followers is a good indicator of the social aspect of micro-blogging. And although I’ve concluded that it’s not the best tool for summarising individual points for a series of talks I have found that it can provide social benefits. After the conference had finished and on my last night in Taipei I tweeted that I was about to head off for a meal. A few minutes later I received a phone call from Casey Bisson, a fellow speaker at the conference. He’d spotted my tweet and suggested we go out for a meal. Which we did, and found a German restaurant where we found sausages and dark German beer made a refreshing change from the Chinese meals we’d been eating.

And then arriving at Montreal I tweeted a few minutes after arriving at the hotel that I was about to go out for a meal. A few minutes later I received a series of suggestions for how I should spend my time in Montreal:

And a few minutes later another Twitterer pointed out a post on the conference forum aimed at “Beer Geeks in Montreal“:

From this I’ve learnt about the serendipitous benefits Twitter can provide. If I say where I am and what I’d like to do, people are willing to help :-) And this, of course, fits in nicely with the social aspect of conferences - it’s not all about listening to talks.

Micro-Blogs At The Museums and The Web Conference

These reflections are very relevant to the Museums and the Web 2008 conference I am currently attending. Mike Ellis (with whom I am running two sessions at the conference) is providing the technical infrastructure for aggregating blog posts, Flickr feeds, etc. related to the conference. Mike is currently finalising these technologies, which includes an aggregation of posts on the conference.archimuse.com home page and, something I’ve not seen before, a timeline of Twitter posts with the #mw2008 tag.

It is really interesting to see how the use of networked technologies at events is evolving. Initially we were using self-containing instant messaging tools, but we’re now using tools, such as Twitter, which, when used in conjunction with RSS feeds and agreed tags (#mw2008 in this case) allows the content to be reused in a variety of different ways. I’m looking forward to seeing how this experiment works.

UKOLN 30th Anniversary Celebrations

I’ve just written a post about my participation at the Museums and the Web 2008 conference. Although I’m pleased to be so actively involved in this conference, I do regret the fact that the conference coincides with the UKOLN 30th Anniversary celebrations which will be taking place at the British Library Conference Centre on Thursday 10th April 2008.

As my colleague Paul Walk has written, the event features talks from senior figures in the Library, Higher Education and Cultural Heritage sectors.  I will be sorry to miss the opportunity to meet up with the speakers and participants at the event.  I would particularly have liked to chat to Lorcan Dempsey, who appointed me to the post of UK Web Focus back in 1996. And I should acknowledge Cliff Lynch’s dedication - Cliff will be giving a talk on Reflections on Museums and the Web 2008 here in Montreal on Saturday 12 April, just two days after speaking at the UKOLN event.  Unfortunately as I am running sessions on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday it hasn’t been possible for me to participate at both events - although I hope that a short video clip giving my reflections of my time at UKOLN will be played at the event.

My best wishes to everyone at the anniversary event, and all those others I’ve met during my eleven years at UKOLN who have helped to make my role at UKOLN so stimulating and enjoyable.

 

 

 

 

Museums and the Web 2008 Conference

It was over 19 months ago when Jennifer Trant invited me to join the programme committee for the Museums and the Web 2007 Conference. As myself and colleagues at UKOLN were looking to engage more with the museums sector, I welcomed this opportunity. And as I like to engage fully with such activities, I found myself at last year’s conference presenting one paper (on Addressing The Limitations Of Open Standards), running a professional forum with Professor Stephen Brown on Accessibility 2.0: A holistic and user-centred approach to Web accessibility) and contributing to a paper by Mike Ellis on Web 2.0: How to stop thinking and start doing: Addressing organisational barriers. In addition I chaired a session at the conference. And while I was at the event I blogged about the conference.

Jennifer, together with David Bearman, have succeeded in getting their money’s worth out of me again this year :-) I’m in Montreal this week for the this year’s Museums and the Web 2008 Conference. And this year I’ll be running a half-day Blogging workshop, with Mike Ellis (the workshop, I’ve just noticed, is fully subscribed), running a professional forum, again with Mike Ellis, on What Does Openness Mean To The Museum Community? and again chairing a session, this year on Search - which is being held on Saturday morning!

It’s going to be a busy week, I can tell. And as I seem to have left the snow behind in England, and am enjoying the sunshine here in Montreal :-)

Have I Got News For You

I’m sure many readers of this blog will be familiar with the Have I Got News For You TV programme. So I’d like to make my contribution. Which is the odd one out for the following: UMIST, AHDS, Lotus and Yahoo!?

For those unfamilar with this BBC programme, the convention is that the first responses are expected to be humourus, before attempting an answer. And note that there isn’t a single answer to the question.

IWR Information Professional of The Year 2007 Article in Panlibus

I’m pleased to report that a two-page feature article which describes my work activities on best practices for exploiting Web 2.0 has been published in Talis’s Panlibus Newsletter (Issue 8, Spring 2008). Many thanks to the editorial team, Ceri McCall and Harpeet Kaur Dhillon, for their support - and I’m particularly pleased with the layout of the article, which includes a photograph of myself receiving the IWR award and the cartoon which was drawn the following day.

I must admit that I am a fan of the Talis newsletter (I should probably disclose that I know both of Talis’s Technology Evangelists: Paul Miller, who used to work at UKOLN, and Ian Davis). Although it is perhaps surprising that there doesn’t appear to be an online version of the newsletter available. Correction a PDF version is available. The article is on pages 6-7.

The current issue (which runs to 26 pages) includes feature articles from Chris Banks, the Librarian at the University of Aberdeen (on the future of the library) and Christopher West, Director of Library and Information Services at Swansea. As always, Paul Miller has written an excellent article entitled “Unlock the power of shared data” - and for those with an interest in open data I’d recommend subscribing to his Panlibus and Nodalities blog.

But the article I found of most interest was written by Dame Lynne Brindley. In her article in developments in The British Library Lynne reporting that her organisation is “adapting to the ‘wiki’ view and the ‘beta’ mindset of the digital world and engaging more with the needs of the ‘Millenials’. … We are encouraging a more participative approach through co-created experiences, user-created content, remixing services and social networking spaces. We have established Facebook groups, posted relevant videos on YouTube and are experimenting with he possibilities offered by Second Life and MySpace“.

UKOLN is hosting its 30^th anniversary event at the British Library next week, with Dame Lynne Brindley as one of the guest speakers. I’m very pleased that the work of myself and my colleagues at UKOLN is so closely aligned with the thinking at The British Library. My only regret is that I won’t be able to attend the event as I’ll be participating at the Museums and the Web 2008 conference next week.

Are Social Networks Accessible?

Are social networking services such as Facebook accessible to people with disabilities? As suggested by the title the ZDNet article on Social networking: Not as inclusive as you might think would indicate that they’re not.

The article initially suggests that “social networks have created a level playing field for internet users — regardless of their physical disabilities” with a description of a user, Simon Stevens, with cerebral palsy who ” is a highly successful entrepreneur and consultant, and finds time to run a successful nightclub”. The article goes on to say:

Stevens is highly active in Second Life, and also uses Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn. Social networks are a vital business and social tool, he says. “Sometimes, it’s difficult for people with impairments to physically meet or get to places, and the internet makes that much easier,” he says. Added to which, social networks present entrepreneurs with a golden business opportunity. “There are 10 million users on Second Life and Facebook — that’s a big potential market and it’s ideally suited to campaigning,” he says.

Good news for users with disabilities, it would seem. But the article then goes on to suggest that social networks have barriers to users with disabilities: “Most mainstream social networks don’t offer a simplified audio or “text only” version of their pages” and “… the biggest challenge for users is something that might at first seem very small: Captcha. … many disabled users have to rely on friends and family to complete Captcha forms on their behalf, and those without anyone to help them are often locked out of the networks altogether“.

The article goes on to suggest that “A lack of accessibility is driving many disabled web users to create their own, alternative social-networking platforms” and argues that “Sites need to tighten up the privacy and control settings and make them easier for people to understand“.

So social networking services fail to be accessible, then? And we should therefore stop using them, it might appear? I would disagree. The comment that “Most mainstream social networks don’t offer a simplified audio or “text only” version of their pages” clearly fails to appreciate that o comply with the WCAG accessibility guidelines you shouldn’t be providing text only version of pages!

And when the article suggests that “A lack of accessibility is driving many disabled web users to create their own, alternative social-networking platforms” is this really the case - or are disability organisations simply following the crowds in setting up social networking services just like so many other organisations? And Disaboom, which provides “disabled people with a secure, accessible online community” ironically fails to comply with WCAG 1.0 guidelines!

What evidence is there that disabled users are failing to use the mainstream social networks? Facebook has a number of groups for users with disabilities including “Blind Students on Facebook” and “Deaf all around the world” and a blog post on “The Gift Shop is Now Open .. for Everybody” by a Facebook developer states that:

Most Facebook pages adhere to the guidelines which make the site accessible to the blind community. Recently, however, we received reports from a few devoted users that not all of our features were up to snuff. So, this week we launched a screen-reader accessible version of the Gift Shop . It’s currently linked off the help page, though later this week we’ll be incorporating it more tightly with the original Gift Shop.

Well they would say that, you might suggest. But a blog post entitled Myspace and facebook, Comparative published in August 2007 the author concluded that “I have found myspace to be completely inapproachable and seemingly uncaring of their visually impaired users. Facebook were prompt and their content is completely accessible“. OK, the methodology may be flawed and this is only one report - but at least it is based on user testing rather than compliance with guidelines.

The one area I haven’t covered is the barriers impose by CAPTCHA when registering to signup with social networks. The RNIB has reported on the accessibility issues associated with CAPCHA and concluded:

It really seems to me that there is no catch all accessible alternative to CAPTCHA that can be secured from spammers. As we’ve seen some sites make efforts to incorporate an audio CAPTCHA but this isn’t sufficient, even if a logic question were thrown into the mix, (putting aside the fact that this places a lot of development work on the website owner to provide all three options).

The article goes on to say that “it certainly seems that website owners are choosing security over accessibility“. Possibly true, but lets not forget that the ZDNet article argued that “Sites need to tighten up the privacy and control settings“. And if automated bots succeed in signing up to social networking services due to the lack of CAPTCHA barriers, users with disabilities will be particularly inconvenienced by the spam which is bound to follow.

A post entitled “Thanks, Facebook!” on the American Foundation for the Blind’s blog indicated that Facebook does seem to be addressing the CAPTCH problem and concluded:

For now, we want to thank Jeff and Facebook for making accessibility a priority. As Michelle said after the meeting, “I really liked what he said about Facebook really being accessible for everyone who wants to use it, because, of course he’s right, but I don’t think other people are always as considerate.” 

Clearly much more research on the accessibility of social networking services is needed - but let’s remember that disabled students are students too, and will be likely to want to make use the same social networking services as their friends. Let’s not assume that new services are bound to be inaccessible! And let’s apply the same level of criticisms to the other services we make use of too - it would be ironic if systems procured or developed for use within institutions were even more inaccessible than social networking services. And sadly I have heard stories of enterprise systems within universities which only worked with Internet Explorer :-(