University 2.0: the Extended University Conference

The University 2.0: the Extended University Conference

I mentioned recently that I’ll be giving a seminar on “What can We Learn From Amplified Events?” at the University of Girona next month. My main purpose for my trip to Spain is, however, to give an invited keynote plenary talk at the University 2.0: the Extended University conference which will be held at the UIMP (Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo) in Santander on 6-8^th September 2010.

The title of my talk is “Embedding and Sustaining University 2.0“. The talk will, in part, be based on the risks and opportunities framework which have been described in papers on “Library 2.0: Balancing the Risks and Benefits to Maximise the Dividends” and “Empowering Users and Institutions: A Risks and Opportunities Framework for Exploiting the Social Web“. The talk will also discuss the implications of the economic crisis on the use of networked technologies in higher education, in particular the challenges and opportunities provided by use of “the Web as the platform”.

University 2.0

But what is meant by the term “University 2.0″? In a post on “Citizen 2.0, Strike 2.0, David Cameron 2.0 and Coldplay 2.0” which I wrote in 2008 I described how the “2.0 meme” had become established and we hear terms such as ‘library 2.0‘,  ‘e-learning 2.0‘, ‘research 2.0‘, ‘enterprise 2.0‘ and ‘government 2.0‘  being used in the media. But what, I wonder, might we mean by “University 2.0″?

The 2.0 is meant to signify change and a new way of doing this and places a role in the rebranding of such changes. The Web 2.0 technologies themselves (blogs, wikis, RSS,etc.) aren’t the most important aspect of such change (they have no relevance in ‘Coldplay 2.0′ or ‘Strike 2.0′, for example) although clearly use of blogs, wikis and social networks will have a role to play in a University 2.0 environment.

More importantly for me are the softer aspects which are a part of Web 2.0 including the emphasis on participation, trusting the user, user generated content, the right to remix and the ‘perpetual beta’ concept.

How might such ideas, depicted in the Web 2.0 meme map, apply to University 2.0?

Some of the softer aspects of associated with Web 2.0 seem to be very relevant to the core activities carried out in higher educational institutions:

Participation, not publishing: We expect students to take an active role in learning, and not to be passive consumers of learning materials which institutions may publish.

Right to remix: Learning and research might be regarded as processes whereby learners and researchers are exposed to new ideas and ‘remix’ them to provide something new, such as new insights.

Perpetual beta: Learning and research is a journey, not a destination. There is never a time in which learning may be felt to be ‘complete’ – learning is alway beta, always developing.

Trust your users: In educational institutions we have trusted academics who have, here at the University of Bath “within the law to question and test received wisdom and to put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions“.

An attitude, not a technology: This aspect provides the extensibility of the 2.0 concept, which enables it to be applied in a range of areas.

The final aspect I’d like to mention appears to be particularly appropriate to today’s environment:

Web as platform: In an institutional context this highlights the regional, national and global nature of education and research, in which benefits can be gained by working beyond the constraints and limitations of the host institution, whilst gaining benefits for members of the local institution.

University 2.0 for me reflects the fundamental principles of what the University experience should be about. But then again many aspects of Web 2.0 describes Tim Berners-Lee’s original vision of the Web. In both cases there are benefits to be gained from the rebranding.

New W3C Document Standards for XHTML and RDFa

New W3C Draft Documents

The W3C have recently announced that new “Drafts of RDFa Core 1.1 and XHTML+RDFa 1.1 [have been] Published“. The announcement states that:

The RDFa Working Group has just published two Working Drafts: RDFa Core 1.1 and XHTML+RDFa 1.1. RDFa Core 1.1 is a specification for attributes to express structured data in any markup language. The embedded data already available in the markup language (e.g., XHTML) is reused by the RDFa markup, so that publishers don’t need to repeat significant data in the document content. XHTML+RDFa 1.1 is an XHTML family markup language. That extends the XHTML 1.1 markup language with the attributes defined in RDFa Core 1.1.

Meanwhile on 24^th June 2010 the latest version of the “HTML5: A vocabulary and associated APIs for HTML and XHTML” working draft was published.

Patrick Lauke’s talk on “HTML5 (and friends): The future of web technologies – today” generated a lot of interest at the IWMW 2010 event – but as I pointed out in the workshop conclusions session, there seems to be some uncertainty as to whether the focus for those involved in the provision of institutional Web services should be on the user interface developments provided in HTML5 or in use of HTML as a contained for reusable (linked) data which RDFa aims to provide.

Of course for many the requirement will be to enhance the user interface (for human visitors) and provide access to machine readable data (for machines). The latter can be achieved in various ways but if you choose to go down the RDFa route a  question then is: “Can you embed RDFa in HTML5 documents and, of so, how do you do this?“.

The answer to this question is not (yet) clear.  The W3C have published a  ”HTML5+RDFa: A mechanism for embedding RDF in HTML” working draft document – but this was released in July 2009 and hasn’t been updated since [Note that while this document on the dev.w3c.org Web site has not been updated or links to new versions provided, as described in a comment to this post a more recent document on HTML+RDFa 1.1: Support for RDFa in HTML4 and HTML5, dated 24 June 2010 is available - this comment added on 2 September 2010].

This document also states that:

Implementors should be aware that this specification is not stable. Implementors who are not taking part in the discussions are likely to find the specification changing out from under them in incompatible ways. Vendors interested in implementing this specification before it eventually reaches the Candidate Recommendation stage should join the aforementioned mailing lists and take part in the discussions.

But such caveats are also true of the RDFa Core 1.1 and XHTML+RDFa 1.1 draft documents, both of which state that:

This is a draft document and may be updated, replaced or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to cite this document as other than work in progress

In addition the HTML5 working draft states that:

Implementors should be aware that this specification is not stable. Implementors who are not taking part in the discussions are likely to find the specification changing out from under them in incompatible ways. Vendors interested in implementing this specification before it eventually reaches the Candidate Recommendation stage should join the aforementioned mailing lists and take part in the discussions.

Meanwhile the “HTML Microdata” working draft was also published on 10^th August 2010, and this again states that:

Implementors should be aware that this specification is not stable. Implementors who are not taking part in the discussions are likely to find the specification changing out from under them in incompatible ways. Vendors interested in implementing this specification before it eventually reaches the Candidate Recommendation stage should join the aforementioned mailing lists and take part in the discussions.

Microdata is being proposed as an extension of microformats which addresses deficiencies in microformats without the added complexities of  RDFa.

What Does the Future Hold?

Should you start to migrate HTML documents from an existing HTML 4 or XHTML 1 environment to HTML5?  The advice given by Patrick Lauke in his talk, as reported by @iwmwlive, was “If you want to take advantage of the new features, go ahead with HTML5, but don’t rush off to recode if you don’t need it“.  But while much of the buzz surrounding the new features provided by HTML5 concern user interface developments (such as native support for video and  enhanced forms validation) the future regarding use of HTML as a container for data seems to be somewhat uncertain.

The best advice may be not to rush off to embed data in your HTML resource if you don’t need to.  But as such advice can be a barrier to innovation if needs to be qualified by the suggestion that if you do wish to embed data using RDFa, microdata of microformats, you should ensure that you do so using a management system which will enable you to change the format you use if you discover that you have selected an approach which fails to take off.  This advice is, of course, reflects the warning given in the draft documents – but not everyone reads such advice!

Best UK University Web Sites – According to Sixth Formers

This week’s issue of the Times Higher Education contains a six page article on “Deciphering the code” which asks “do universities’ websites tell prospective students what they need to know” and invites a panel of sixth-formers to identify the top University Web sites – and those which can be improved.

What were the best performing institutional Web sites? The top ten sites are listed in the following table – and although I an aware that the methodology is open to criticism, the table does provide an opportunity to begin a debate on what potential students may wish to find on University Web sites.

Note initially the top ten sites were listed. However as the table is an alphabetic list of the institutions with 20 points or more such an incomplete listing is misleading.  The list has been updated to include all institutions scoring more than 20 points. Apologies for the confusion.  [Brian Kelly, 26 August 2010].

Best-performing institutions (scoring 20 points or more)	Accessibility	Contact information	Peer review	Unique selling point	Insight
University of Abertay Dundee	5	5	4	4	3
Aston University	5	5	3	2	5
Bangor University	5	5	5	1	4
University of Buckingham	4	4	4	4	4
University of Cambridge	4	4	5	3	5
Edinburgh College of Art	5	4	5	5	5
University of Exeter	3	5	5	3	5
University College Falmouth	4	4	5	5	4
University of Glasgow	4	5	4	3	5
University of Greenwich	5	5	3	4	5
Harper Adams University College	5	5	3	5	4
Imperial College London	5	5	5	4	5
King’s College London	4	4	4	4	4
Kingston University	4	5	3	3	5
University of Kent	5	3	3	5	4
Leeds Metropolitan University	5	5	1	4	5
London School of Economics	4	4	3	5	4
Northumbria University	4	4	3	4	5
University of Nottingham	5	5	3	5	5
University of Oxford	5	5	5	5	5
Royal Agricultural College	4	4	3	5	4
University of Southampton	4	5	3	5	5
Swansea University	5	4	3	4	4
Teesside University	5	5	5	4	5
University of Wales, Lampeter	5	4	5	3	3
University of Wales, Newport	5	5	3	3	5

What did the representatives of the three schools particularly like? I was interested to read the comment that “I struggled to find student comments, and if I did they were always good and never bad ones” – so authentic student voices, including criticisms seems to be welcomed.

I also noticed that Imperial College are “encourag[ing] both students and staff to tag their photos of campus life and engage with prospective students through Flickr and YouTube. The Imperial site also features student blogs and “a week in the life” student profiles.“

But do, I wonder, the approaches which have being adopted by those top ranking universities reflect the discussions and consensus of best practices which we hear about at IWMW events?

The article also mentions that “student discussion is unlikely to take place on the university website itself. Instead, students will meet and talk at the places where they naturally congregate online, on social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo and discussion boards such as The Student Room” and illustrates this point by describing how a student describes the Bangor University Web site as “modern” and “welcomes the clever links to the institution on social networking site Facebook“.

If the image shown below, taken from one of the top-ranked institutions, summarises where the students actually prefer to have the discussions over which institution to select what might this say about the future directions of the marketing aspects of an institution’s Web site?

And is institutional involvement with iTunesU, YouTube, Faceboook, Twitter and Flickr now an accepted part of the portfolio of services which institutional Web team (or comms and marketing teams) will be expected to provide, support and promote?  Has the “creepy tree-house” phrase which was used some time ago to criticise institutional use of Social Web services died as these services become mainstream?

Delivering Blog Posts By Email … But Not By Mailing Lists

Blog Posts By Email …

Did you know that you can choose to receive blog posts by email?  I’ve written about this previously and described how this may have advantages for end users who either do not have access to RSS readers (e.g. they are not provided on an institutional desktop) or prefer the familiarity of their email client.

An example of how blog posts are displayed in an email client is shown below.  This illustrates that the service (in this case Feedblitz) included embedded images together with a tables of contents, providing internal links to both multiple articles and section headings in a blog post.

… But Not By Mailing Lists

The reason I’m revisiting this subject is in response to recent discussions on Twitter and several library-related mailing lists regarding the excessive posts to such lists made by Gerry McKieran.  Gerry is a prolific blogger and clearly has a real passion about his interest.  Unfortunately Gerry fails to appreciate  that many mailing lists have been established to support community interests and multiple posts from an individual can hinder the effective workings of such lists. Such problems are compounded when the person posting (a) fails to engage in discussions on the lists and (b) duplicates the posts on other lists.

Despite a heartfelt plea from Davey Patten on the LIS-Web2 list which has been echoed by others on various lists, in a post entitled “The Universe Is Not Flat >>> Let The Conversations Continue >>>”   Gerry points out (apparently without irony) that “in most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action“. Therefore  he asks, in his own inimitable style, “Please Don’t Diss Me For Being Actively Engaged >>> Or Because I Have Broad Interests“.

Yes, let the conversations continue on mailing lists. But let users choose to subscribe to blog posts or receive  Twitter alerts for new posts. But let’s not replicate blog posts across multiple mailing list, please. >>>Email Delivery of Blog Posts :  An Idea Whose Time Has Come !!! >>>

Which Email Service To Use?

Although end users may wish to make their own decision as to which email subscription service to use, in reality, I think, blog owners will need to make it easy for their readers to subscribe to posts by email.

But which service to use?  I have provided two option in this side bar for this blog: WordPress’s subscription service and the service provided by Feedburner.

I added the link to the WordPress subscription service recently as I wondered if this would provide any additional benefits.  In my administrator’s interface I can see that there seems to be 26 active subscribers who receive blog posts and 146 subscribers to comments on specific posts.

However the Feedburner service (now owned by Google) does seem provide more information. There are currently 91 subscribers to the service and the numbers have grown particularly since the blog post describing the service was published.

In light of this I intend to remote the link to the WordPress subscription service. I’ll also try to ensure that other blogs I contribute to provide a link to the Feedburner service – so that I won’t need to send posts my email!

“5 Days Left to Choose a New Ning Plan”

I received an email on 16 August announced that I had “5 Days Left to Choose a New Ning Plan“.  The email related to the announcement Ning made a few months ago that the company was withdrawing its provision of free social networks.

We had made use of Ning to provide the IWMW 2008 social network.   The email informed me that “the network has grown up a bit since you started the ball rolling. You have grown to 90 members who have collectively helped you add unique photos, some interesting videos, and 24 spirited discussions“.

What action, if any, was needed in response to this email? The simple answer would be to suggest that nothing needed to be done as the social network was established simply to support an event which took place 2 years ago – so there’s no point in paying the $19.95 annual subscription for the social network to continue to be hosted. But what if the social network (or indeed any other Cloud Service) hosted useful content which I would not like to lose?  So I took the opportunity to evaluate copying the Web site prior to its demise – and I hope that documenting this process with be of interest to others.

The WinHTTrack software was used on Monday 16 August 2010 to create a copy of the IWMW 2008 social network. The mirror is currently hosted on the main IWMW 2008 Web site – although we are making no commitment to hosting the content on a long term basis.

The purpose of the provision of the Ning social network for the event was to provide a communications and collaboration environment for IWMW 2008 delegates and also to gain a better understanding of whether such a service was need.  We discovered that the usage was low, with only 90 registered members out of about 180+ registered delegates and, despite the “spirited discussions” rhetoric in the email from Ning, there was very little use made of the discussion fora on the service.

We kept a record of information provided by the WinHTTrack mirroring software.  Despite the low usage I was surprised to discover that the mirror took 1 hour 42 minutes to run. The mirror is 175 Mb and contains 9,065 files and 282 folders.

Once the mirror had been created the navigational bars were updated to link to the local resource rather than the Ning social network, and a record of the process was documented. In addition a news item was created on the IWMW 2008 event news feed.

Our intention will be to delete this mirror shortly, as we do not feel it provides any useful content. We will, however, be keeping a record that the Ning social network was used and provide a summary of its usage,  so that, for example, we will have a record of the technologies used to support the various IWMW events.

We’ve also decided to publish this summary so that if anyone has any interest in the event’s social network, the tool used to mirror the content or the policy we intend to implement will have the opportunity to give their comments.

This is a summary of how we responded to the announcement of the closure. I wonder what will happen to the 33 Ning social networks I found using a search for ‘JISC’?  One, I noticed, is a “personal portfolio to record and reflect on my work experience” contains spam for free drugs! There are others, however, which have been used to support the work of the JISC Regional Support Centres (this one, for example), JISC-funded projects (such as this one) and  events (such as this example).

The use of such services to support events, in particular, raises some interesting issues. I have previously suggested that “The lesson I’ve learnt – there’s a need to change the settings for social networks set up to support events after the event is over. I still prefer to make it easy to subscribe to such services, however, in order to avoid any delays caused by the need to accept new subscriptions manually“. But as well as tightening up on access after an event is over in order to avoid spam are futher measures needed?  Should the content be replicated elsewhere? Should the social networking site be closed? Or should we be happy with the default option of simply doing nothing – after all, although the announcement stated that the free service would be withdrawn on 20 August, it is still available today.

Latest News: I have just received an email stating that “we’ve decided to extend the deadline until August 30, 2010.“.

Escaping the Constraints of Space and Time

The Amplification of Events

When Lorcan Dempsey coined the term ‘amplified conference’ the image I initially had was of a megaphone so that people outside the conference space could hear what was being said.   However after I had created the Wikipedia entry I realised this image was inappropriate as, with Twitter, for example, we are amplified the discussions within the conference as well as amplifying the discussions for an external audience.

Escaping The Constraints of Space and Time

An  alternative metaphor I have used previously describes how a variety of networked technologies can be used to ‘escape the constraints of space and time‘. If you think about it the talk at a conference takes place in a non-interoperable ‘walled garden‘. Wikipedia describes a walled garden as  ”a closed or exclusive set of information services provided for users“. This analogy normally refers to access which is restricted due to technical barriers. In this case, however, the restricted access to talks is due to physical constraints (not being physically present) and time constraints (not being in the right place at the right time).

“Ye Canna Break The Laws of Physics”

We don’t normally think of a talk given at a conference as being in a walled garden.  This may be because, as Scotty put it “Ye canna break the laws of physics“. But although this may not have been possible in Star Trek, our very own Doctor Who famously does travel across both space and time.

If Doctor Who Arrived On Planet Earth Today

Source: paulstallard WordPress blog

Back in November 2007 I wrote a post on The History Of The Web Backwards which Tony Hirst described as “a trick [used] as a tool for helping out with the creation of risk assessments“.

Tony’s post described Reversible, Reverse History and Side-by-Side Storytelling – an idea which I’d like to revisit. Image Doctor Who visits planet earth in the early part of the twenty-first century. His sidekick discovers the excitement shared in some circles for the, at the time, new concept of amplified events.

Sidekick: Why are the earthlings so excited about amplified events? How else would you learn?

Doctor: Up to the start of the twenty-first century the earthlings had to travel to large centres of learning called ‘universities’ (or schools for the young).  A complex system called a timetable was created which ensured that the elders of the tribe met the young people in the same location at the same time.  This system had been in existence for many eons – and some speculated that Stonehenge was the first timetable scheduling system.

Sidekick: But that’s crazy and inefficient!  Why didn’t the elders simply record their knowledge on a multimedia device?

Doctor: They did – it was called a ‘book’ (although it only contained text and static images). Remember computers had only been around for about 50 years at this time – and this was about 20 years since the Earthlings had thought that digital watches were a pretty neat idea.

Sidekick:  OK. But once the multimedia capture and playback technologies became available they must have started to use them straight away.  Didn’t everyone have a mobile phone then?

Doctor: That’s the strange thing.  They argued against it. “It’s rude” they said. Or “Not everyone has such devices so nobody should be allowed to use them“.

Sidekick:  How strange.

Doctor: But even worse was how the mega-organisations reacted.  They made money out of lots of students arriving at the same place at the same time.  And they were resistant to change.

Sidekick:  Ah yes, the Luddites.

Doctor: Not quite, these were called Professors.

Sidekick:  What’s the difference?

Doctor: (unsure, changes the subject) …

The Interoperability of Amplified Events

We are now seeing how technology can be used to save talks from the walled garden of the place and time at which they were given.  We can now take videos of talks, mash them up with the discussions which were taking place (using, for example, Martin Hawksey’s iTitle Twitter captioning service) and embed them in digital resources – for example see Chris Sexton’s talk which she gave at the University of Sheffield from 14:00-14:45 on Monday 12 July 2010.

We’re now making the physical world digital and interoperable :-)  But why aren’t we doing more of this?  Shouldn’t the default position be that conferences are amplified unless there are good reasons not to do this?

Should Event Web Sites Be The First To Be Outsourced?

I noticed a recent tweet from Nicole Harris which announced that “programme for #FAM10 now available at:https://sites.google.com/site/jiscfam10/FAM10/programme“.

I was intrigued by use of a free third party Web site creation service such as Google Sites for creating a Web site for the JISC FAM10 event.

Nicole had previously written a blog post on”Counting the Costs of FAM10” in which she announced that “After a lot of soul searching with regards to the current funding cuts, I have decided that it will be appropriate to go ahead with FAM10 this year with a real focus on practical benefits for librarians and developers“.

Nicole went on to add that she “would love your ideas for keeping the costs down on what will be a face-to-face event“. In addition to thinking of ways of reducing costs of accommodation and entertainment Nicole described how she has “always been against event management companies“.  Although Nicole is not in favour of outsourcing events management she has decided to outsource the IT infrastructure for the event: ”we will do all the event management in-house … using Google for booking forms, document management, presentation publication and event information“.

The FAM10 Web site provides a handful of pages about the event (programme, speakers’ biographies and details of the exhibitors), use of a Google Doc for signing up to the parallel sessions and the EventBrite service  for registration.

Nicole seems to be responding to the onset of costs across the HE sector by reducing the effort and level of technical expertise needed to provide an event Web site and process registrations.  I think this approach should be applauded.  But what is being lost and what are the risks?

The use of Google Site, Google Docs and EventBrite means:

• The event doesn’t have the JISC branding which would be provided if the event information were hosted on the JISC Web site.
• The event doesn’t have the JISC site navigation which would be provided if the event information were hosted on the JISC Web site.
• There are risks of loss of data due to the dependencies on the Google services or EventBrite companies.

What other risks should be included?

But aren’t these risks relatively small?  Google, in particular, is unlikely to go bankrupt in the 48 days before the FAM10 event is held.  And although EventBrite is a much smaller company registration details are sent via email, so a backup of the registration details is available. I should add that we have used EventBrite for UKOLN’s workshops for the cultural heritage sector and have been pleased with the service. You should also note that EventBrite is free for free events, such as FAM10 and the events we have used it for.  In this respect use of the Google services and EventBrite can be used to demonstrate that the public sector is not “wasting tax-payers’ money” (to use the language of the Daily Mail) when similar free services are available.

In a recent blog post entitled “Web Development: Not Core and Ripe for Outsourcing” I referred to a discussion on the US-based University Web Developers forum in which it was pointed out “Web development is not a core mission of a university and is ripe for outsourcing“.

In response Anthony Leonard pointed out that “the core purpose of Universities is learning, research and public outreach, with knowledge at it’s heart” and asked “Surely the key knowledge tool of the age is the web?“

Whilst I would agree of the importance of the Web as a key knowledge tool, that doesn’t preclude third parties from hosting various aspects of an institution’s Web services.  And what, after all, is to be gained from in-house development of event Web sites when there are a variety of alternative approaches.

At IWMW 2010 event Paul Boag argued that the recession provides an opportunity for institutional Web teams to identify the services they provide  which can be cut or provided in other ways. Shouldn’t Web teams in institutions be welcoming the opportunity to move away from developing Web sites for events in order to free resources to support ways in which the Web can be  used  as a knowledge tool?

“Web Development: Not Core and Ripe for Outsourcing”

The headline in this week’s issue of the Times Higher Education is blunt: “The heat is on: official hints that cuts could rise to 35%“. And on the same day I read that article I was alerted to a comment published in response to the “When The Axe Man Cometh” post on the University Web Developers forum. This cited a book on “A University for the 21st Century” written by James Duderstadt, President Emeritus at the University of Michigan. Of particular interest was the comment that:

“Higher education is an industry ripe for the unbundling of activities. Universities will have to come to terms with what their true strengths are and how those strengths support their strategies – and then be willing to outsource needed capabilities in areas where they do not have a unique advantage.“

I was also interested to hear the implications for those working in Web teams:

“The core mission of a college or university is teaching (and in some cases research). Web development is not a core mission of a university and is ripe for outsourcing.” (my emphasis)

I was particularly struck by this comment (which, although published in 2000, does appear to be much more relevant today) as it echoed similar remarks which I made in my opening talk at the IWMW 2010 event. I reminded the 170+ participants (plus those watching the video stream) that the core mission for our Universities is teaching and learning together with, in many cases, research – the provision of Web services is an overhead which is used to support these core institutional activities. My intention in making these comments at the opening of the event was to suggest that there is a need for the Web management community to transform itself.  My suggestion for such transformation, which I outlined in a post on ““When The Axe Man Cometh” – the Future of Institutional Web Teams” is for institutional Web teams to regard themselves as acting as part of a national institutional Web management community, and ensure that, by working in an open fashion, work being carried out within the institution was available to others in the sector. The rationale behind my suggestion is that by ensuring that much more sharing of ideas, experiences, successes and failures will reduce the amount of duplication of work being carried out across the sector, thus freeing time to implement innovative ideas which can help to enhance the quality of services Web teams provide to teaching, learning and research. But such approaches won’t help if we do see cuts of up to 30% being implemented over the next three years.   On the assumption that the cuts won’t all  fall on academic departments or other service departments (the library, IT services and central administration, for example) we would then have to face cuts across institutional Web teams. But will such cuts be implemented by outsourcing institutional Web development and support?  And, if so, what will be the implications of such outsourcing? Any thoughts?

Sharing Discussions of a JISCPress Meeting

Meeting With The JISCPress Team

Joss Winn and Alex Bilbie from the  University of Lincoln and Tony Hirst from the  Open University recently visited UKOLN  for a meeting with myself and colleagues at UKOLN about the JISC-funded JISCPress project. If you have not heard of JISCPress here is a brief summary:

“The JISCPress project has developed a successful demonstrator platform for the discussion, deliberation, annotation and dissemination of documents, using the well-known WordPress blogging software. In particular, the digress.it plugin is now in use by a wide range of organisations, including Cornell University, the New York Public Library, WriteToReply and JISC. It is also being used by HEIs to support Teaching and Learning.“

At UKOLN we have made use of the JISCPress for a number of reports we have either written or have close involvement with:

• SWORD V2.0: Deposit Lifecycle
• Survive Or Thrive 2010 report
• JISC consultation on identifiers 2010
• Guide to Web Preservation

The meeting provided an opportunity for us to gain a better understanding of the software and how it is being used in order to explore the possibilities of making greater use of this software for providing what is becoming known in UK Government circle as  ’commentable documents‘.

Issues Discussed

The main issues I raised during the meeting were:

Document processing: How long does it take to take a document (which might typically be provided in MS Word or PDF format)  and make it available via the JISCPress service?

Types of feedback and comments:  Is it envisaged that JISCPress is used to receive comments while a document is being developed, or to allow users to give comments and ask questions after a completed document has been published?

How to maximise user engagement: If you make a document available using JISCPress can you expect users to come and give comments or do you need to be proactive?

Naming conventions: There seems to be some confusion between the various names which are being used, such as JISCPress, WriteToReply, CommentPress and digress.it.  How can such confusions be addressed?

Target audience : Who is the software/service aimed at?

I received useful answers to these questions:

• It can take a couple of hours to process a report, which involved copying and pasting the contents of the report into WordPress – and this time can be longer if the report containing complicated tables or large numbers of images. However if you wish to ensure that readers of your document can provided comments and feedback then  this effort may be needed.
• JISCPress can be used to enable comments to be made at various stages in a document’s lifecycle.   So rather than attempting to define how JISCPress should be used it is probably better to observe the different ways it is being used.
• There will be a need to continually encourage users to provide feedback.
• There is some confusion between the name of the project, the software and various instantiations of the software. I think this can be summarised as JISCPress is the name of the project (which is described on the project blog) and the name of the hosting service which hosts commentable documents for the JISC; WriteToReply is the name of the hosting service for UK Government commentable documents; CommentPress is the name of a WordPress plugin which has been used to support the service and digress.it is both the name of an enhanced WordPress plugin and a generic hosting service for commentable documents.
• The digress.it software is an open source plugin for WordPress.  Institutions which wish to provide a service for hosting their own commentable documents may wish to use the software.

I hope this is an accurate reflection of the responses I received at the meeting – but if not I am sure Joss, Tony or Alex will respond :-)

Publishing a Summary of the Meeting

I have to admit that I would not have published this summary of the meeting if I had not been alerted to the blog posts published shortly after Joss Winn and Tony Hirst had returned to their office.

Tony reflected “On the Different Roles Documents and Comments May Take in a Commentable Document” and suggested that “there are at least three different roles we might expect a commentable document to play in a open discussion context … (1) draft document … ; (2) consultation document … and (3)  guidance document“

Meanwhile Joss’s asked “Who are our users?” and identified “three type[s] of user and therefore three areas of documentation that need to be developed:  (1) Site administrators; (2) Document Authors and (3) Document Readers/Commenters“.  Joss went on to address ways in which the project deliverables could be sustained:

• Useful code (i.e. a plugin that works)
• A community site
• Email discussion list
• Written documentation
• Visual support (screencasts)
• Examples of different types of use
• Examples where its use is probably inappropriate
• A comparison of alternatives
• Bug tracker/public code repository

I think that is a really useful summary. But I would add one additional suggestion: encouraging community discussion about the project’s work (and not just a community site for hosting documents  or developer community engagement in enhancing the open source plugin).

It struck me that in publishing their notes of the meeting in a public forum (their blogs) Tony and Joss have played a useful role in enhancing awareness of the project and facilitating further discussion – which, thanks to their posts,  I am participating in (and a tweet about their work should help to raise awareness even further).

As a general point I would ask: shouldn’t projects be doing more in sharing notes of project meetings in this way, rather than simply sending summaries to project mailing lists as I suspect may be the norm.

And having learnt about the need to be pro-active in encourage feedback on  commentable documents I’ll remind people of the documents UKOLN has made available on JISCPress:

• SWORD V2.0: Deposit Lifecycle
• Survive Or Thrive 2010 report
• JISC consultation on identifiers 2010
• Guide to Web Preservation

Your feedback would be most welcome :-)

“Why Skype has Conquered the World”

Yesterday the Guardian published an article entitled “Why Skype has Conquered the World“. This reminded of my “Skype, Two Years After Its Nightmare Weekend” post. Back in September 2009 I wrote:

The headline in the Technology Guardian supplement read “Skype’s nightmare weekend highlights peer-to-peer fears” two year’s ago back on 23 August 2007. The article described how “Skype’s popular internet telephone service went down on August 16 and was unavailable for between two and three days“.

I remember this incident as, with people’s attention focussed on the loss of this service (fortunately at a non-critical time in the academic year) our University IT Service department took the opportunity to remind the Skype users on campus (which included me) that Skype was a proprietary application. The recommended VoIP application, which was about to be deployed for the start of the academic year, was the FreeWire phone service. This, I was told, was recommended as it was based on open standards. This sounded interesting, especially if it provided the application independence which Skype lacks. So I looked at the FreeWire Web site and found that “It’s only when you call non-Freewire phones that you have to pay“. So it’s based on open standards, but you have to pay if you try to call a user who isn’t running the same software as you. It’s no different from Skype, it would seem – except, perhaps, that as I speak there are almost 17 million Skype users online. In comparison the standards-based FreeWire service services a niche market (and perhaps a satisfied niche market as, here at Bath University several student residences now have Voice-over-IP telephones in the bedrooms).

How how things developed in the VoIP world since then?  Yesterday’s Guardian article tells us that:

Skype is one of the great unheralded success stories of the internet: where Facebook and Twitter are busy shortening attention spans and relieving us of our sense of private space, Skype has quietly changed the way we talk. That Facebook has 500 million users is well known but there are 560 million registered Skype users who have made a total of 250bn minutes of calls since it was founded, seven years ago this month.

The article went on to suggest that Skype’s success was due to its ease-of-use and low cost:

Using it is easy: all you need is an internet connection and a laptop that has a microphone and, ideally, a webcam. When I first visited the US, 20 years ago, I would ring home by shovelling sackloads of quarters into payphones; these days, thanks to Skype, I can talk daily to friends from anywhere in the world. Calls are free to other Skype users and cheap to everyone else.

It’s not without its flaws, though:

As a habitual Skype user I have become accustomed to its failings – the frozen webcam image, the metallic sound of the human voice when transported through the air, and the timelag that afflicts some long-distance conversations.

But the author is clearly a fan:

And yet it is still one of the few things online that has indisputably improved our lives and made the world that much smaller and chattier.

and several of the comments to the article support this (“Skype is one of those few online services that are massive but have (as far as I see) zero negative opinion“) with criticisms focussing on Rupert Murdoch’s challenging the right of Skype to register its name as a trademark in Europe, claiming that it is too close to its own Sky brand.

So let’s be honest and admit that a closed proprietary VoIP service has, for the consumer market, triumphed over the open standards alternatives. We need to remember these stories when we make recommendations on use of open standards in development work.  As I proposed in a position paper which I prepared for the CETIS Future of Interoperability Standards meeting early this year there is a need to make use of a risks assessment approach to the selection of open standards.  And one of the risks which needs to be considered is the risk that end users might be happy with proprietary solutions.

5,000 Tweets On

Reflecting on 5,000 Tweets

I have recently published my 5,000th tweet.  My first tweet was posted on 14 March 2006, 9 months after Twitter was launched, and simply said that I was “Filling in my expenses forms, after trip to JISC Conference at Birmingham.”  Like most people’s initial experience of Twitter I had no clear idea of what Twitter was about or what benefits I could possible gain from it. But now, 5,000 tweets on, I have an opportunity to reflect on the benefits which Twitter has provided. Some evidence about my use of Twitter is available using the Tweetstats service, which was used to create the following Wordle which is based on the contents of my tweets. But rather than reviewing the statistics I want to provide an anecdotal summary of my Twitter usage.

Strengthened Professional Links

I have recently described how A Tweet Takes Me To Catalonia. In brief I discovered that a chemistry professor at the University of Girona has similar interests to mine in the potential of Web 2.0 to enhance various institutional activities e-and this led to an invitation to give a seminar  over there.

Better Peer-Reviewed Papers

There have been two examples of how Twitter enhanced the quality of my peer-reviewed papers. Earlier this year a paper on “Developing countries; developing experiences: approaches to accessibility for the Real World” won an award for the best communications paper at the W4A 2010 conference.  The paper included new insights into work on holistic approaches to Web accessibility which were provided by Sarah Lewthwaite and, as I’ve described previously, “It Started With A Tweet“.

I’ve not yet met Sarah face-to-face but I did meet two co-authors of a paper on “From Web Accessibility to Web Adaptability” following tweets I received after giving a talk at the OzeiWAI 2009 conference. As I have described previously:

“the talk seemed to go down well – and I was particularly pleased that when I sat down after my talk and refreshed the Twitterfon application on my iPod Touch it provided me with instant feedback on the talk from two of the participants at the conference. RuthEllison told me that she “@briankelly enjoyed your presentation this morning about a holistic approach to accessibility #ozewai” and scenariogirl also showed some Australian warmth:  ”@briankelly Fantastic talk this morning, I will come up and say hi at lunch ;)“.”

I did have lunch with Ruth Ellison and Lisa Herrod (scenariogirl) and discussed our interests in Web accessibility – which led to Ruth and Lisa providing case studies which were included in the paper.

On-the-fly Professional Development

There have been a number of occasions when I’ve arrived at work and discovered my Twitter community using an event hashtag to discuss talks being presented at a conference.  There have been several times when the Twitter discussion is informed by access to live video-streaming of the talks.  So I can say that Twitter has supported by professional development by alerting me to events and allowing me to contribute to the discussions rather than simply passively consuming the content.

Engaging In Discussions

Over a year ago I described use of Twitter For JISC Bid Writers And Web Developers In this example Grainne Conole asked “just about to do presentation at OU on how t get JISC dosh – any tweet suggestions to throw into the pot??? use #JISCBIDS” valuating bids“.  Grainne received advice and I concluded with the remarks “What a wonderful example of how people involved in writing JISC proposals, those who have been involved in bid-writing previously, potential  markers and JISC programme managers themselves are willing to share their thoughts and suggestions. And, of course, such sharing is good for everyone – better submissions should be prepared which makes it easier for the markers and JISC and the wider community should benefit from the project deliverables“.

A few weeks later Twitter discussions centred about the evaluations of bids. In “What Are the #jiscbid Evaluators Thinking?” in which I summarised an “insight into the evaluators though processes by looking at the Twitter stream for tweets tagged with “jiscbids”.

So over the past couple of years I haven’t just ben involved in discussions about the #WorldCup or the #GeneralElection – much of the discussions have been about work activities.

Sharing One’s Work

Twitter provides an opportunity to sharing my wok with others and, unlike RSS, ensures that there is both a feedback mechanism and a simple means by which they can share such information across their own community. Twitter might be described as a viral form of RSS for sharing summaries of one’s work.

Promoting the Work of Others

On Friday 25 June, shortly before an interview on Radio 4, I tweeted “To museum people: I’m being interviewed about future of museums in digital age for Radio 4. Examples of good stuff needed #MakingHistoryLeeds – Radio 4 Making History programme“.  Terry McAndrew responded a few minutes later with the information that “biosci OER pilot project shows some UCL Grant museum to enable it to be accessed across HEhttp://bit.ly/d4R4JQ #MakingHistory“.  I used this information in the interview and was pleased to be able to inform Terry that “@terrymc Your VERB (Virtual Education Resource for the Biosciences) OER project is linked to from Radio 4 Web site http://bit.ly/btXE8M“.

Statistics

What do statistics about my tweets have to say?  The Tweetstats service tells me that “Your top five hashtags: #iwmw10, #online09, #mw2009, #linkeddata, #a11y.” Hmm, it seems that I make use of Twitter a fair amount to support the amplification of events. This service also provides a display of the numbers of tweets posted which is illustrated below.

Conclusions

Back in 2008 one Twitter sceptic invited us to “Imagine a world in which Twitter did not exist (give it a couple of years…) would you really invent a constantly-updated trivia machine as the best way of communicating with [your] audiences?”  A “constantly-updated trivia machine“? perhaps if you wish to use it like that – I don’t and I’m looking forward to the benefits provided by the next 5,00 tweets :-)

“When The Axe Man Cometh” – the Future of Institutional Web Teams

Doom and Gloom

“The doom and gloom of the impending cuts rang out loud and clear” described Deborah F. in her report on the IWMW 2010 event. I introduced this concern in the opening talk and then, in the second talk at the event, Susan Farrell asked “Are web managers still needed when everyone is a web ‘expert’?” As described in a report written by Amy Chamier and published on the IWMW 2010 blog  Susan, former head of Web Services at Kings College, London, explained how those with front-end skills are most at risk. Susan’s advice was to “demonstrate the competitive advantage we deliver in turbulent times. We must show how websites run by web managers cut the cost of: (a) generating new customers (b) back office administration and (c) service delivery. And also, how websites run by amateurs can put an organisation’s reputation at risk.” In her conclusions Susan left the audience with a final question: “Without recognised qualifications and a professional body, do web managers and their specialist skills run the risk of extinction, as our duties are absorbed into other roles?“

But isn’t this all a bit too late? Eleven days after Deborah published her post in which she described that, despite the doom and gloom, “being a hopeless optimist with a healthy realist streak I’m heading into this gloom looking for as many opportunities as possible to innovate and achieve despite the cuts” she wrote a follow-up post entitled “The Axe Man Came“. In the post Deborah described how “After the doom and gloom start to the IWMW event and the later encouragement that this could be a great time to innovate and to do things differently [she]returned to work engaged and enthused“. However shortly after she returned to work Deborah was informed that her “web team was being given to marketing, where there is already a manager“. Sadly seems that the only option available for Deborah is redundancy :-(

Death of the Web Team

The concerns over the future of Web teams isn’t restricted to the HE sector. On the Mission Creep blog Neil Williams, a “government web geek”, speculates on Death of the web team?. Neil describes the evolution of the Web within large organisations from its initial roots in IT. As the importance of content became appreciated responsibilities may have changed.  As the need to engage with the user community became apparent we saw further evolution which was subsequently followed by the need to develop responsibilities for publishing.  Neil feels that everyone now has the potential to be involved: “The explosion in social interaction online created direct communications between customers and employees, and before long it will be happening all over the place. The organisation is no longer in control of where customer-employee or customer-customer interaction happens; let alone what’s being said. Digital communications is now, or will soon be, everyone’s job – listening, collaborating and responding online must become core competences for all if the organisation wants to continue to manage its reputation and meet the expectations of its customers.“

I agree.  ”Here comes everybody” – and the view that Web managers need simply to market themselves more effectively fails to recognise this changed environment. What then, is to be done?  Neil Williams concludes by suggesting that “the future of the web team involves a simultaneous strengthening of control by the centre and a transfer of trust and skills to the wider organisation. It’s about choosing the right bits of digital, and the right bits of responsibility to hold onto or to devolve.“

For me this transfer of trust and skills is particularly appropriate in the higher education sector.  So rather than worrying about “websites run by amateurs [which] can put an organisation’s reputation at risk” there’s a need to recognise the value of  the effort being provided across the institution.  And such effort can ensure that an institution’s use of the Web  is greater than the effort provided within central Web teams.  We saw an example of this is the workshop session on “Sheffield Made Us – using social media to engage students in the university brand” which described a case study in which “the University of Sheffield ran a competition encouraging students to upload videos to Youtube with the incentive of a £3000 prize. The aim was to get the students to express in their own words what they thought of the University, and how Sheffield had made them.”  This sounds like a great example of a “transfer of trust and skills to the wider organisation”.

What is to be Done?

But what of the idea of “simultaneously strengthening of control by the centre“?  If you take an institutional perspective this would appear to suggest the need to strengthen centralised provision and control.  But if we step outside our own institution and consider the wider perspective we may get a different perspective on what is meant by centralised provision and control.

The UK HE sector has taken a leading role in its provision of centralised services through its support for JISC services. We have also, over the past few years, seen institutions exploiting the benefits of Cloud Services. And if we focus on strengthening advice and support, rather than control, by the centre, we have a tradition which dates back since 1997 of the institutional Web management sector sharing advice on best practices and ways of exploiting new developments.

But how can Web teams continue to strengthen the support provided to higher educational institutions? Since members of institutional Web teams may regard departmental provision of Web services as failing to provide ‘competitive advantages’ why not apply that argument to the duplication which takes place across over 160 universities?  How many members of institutions Web teams will currently be developing institutional strategies for exploiting the Social Web, I wonder? How much tax-payers’ money is being wasted in unnecessary duplication of effort? And how much tax-payers’ money is being wasted in a failure to share?  These arguments are well-understood in the context of open access to research publications and research data but could equally be applied to support services such as institutional Web teams.

Specific Examples

In a way these suggestions are nothing new.  The IWMW event was launched in 1997 and since then we have heard hundreds of talks given by members of institutional Web management teams who have been willing to share their experiences and invite discussion and debate.  We have also see a similar willingness to share  experiences and provide support on web-support and website-info-mgt JISCMail lists.  But the IWMW event only takes place annually and, as described previously, discussions of the JISCMail lists have declined significantly over the past 5 years.

Centralised Services for the Web Management Community

An alternative approach (although it would probably be better to describe it as a complementary approach) would be to ensure that the work of institutional Web teams is published openly and in a format suitable for reuse in a variety of ways. This, quite simply, means use of blogs. In a recent post on Revisiting Web Team Blogs I described a number of benefits which can be provided by blogs. I also pointed out that the Google Custom Search Engine can be used to provide a search interface across such information, thus providing a cost-effective mechanism for knowledge sharing across the sector.

In order to encourage the “strengthening of control by the centre” I have created an institutional Web management Community page. This provides access to the search of University Web team blogs. In addition it provides links to two tools developed a couple of years ago by Tony Hirst after his participation at the IWMW 2008 event.

The Autodiscoverable RSS feeds on UK HEI home pages was developed following a suggestion that there was no reason for institutions to not publish press/media release, jobs and upcoming events auto-discoverable RSS feeds. Tony’s tool visits UK HEI home pages and dynamically reports on the numbers which are implementing autodiscoverrable RSS pages – today I find that the adoption rate for is 38.3% (51 out of 133 institutions). This is an example of a centralised auditing approach which members of institutional Web teams will be familiar with, with the intention being to encourage Web providers to implement recommended best practices.

Another tool Tony developed is the UK HEI “Page Not Found” page. In this case no statistics are provided: rather a display of thumbnails of institutional 404 pages is displayed which provides a simple means of  observing the approaches taken across the community – and best practices can then be implemented locally.

The ‘Nudge’ Principle

Tony’s work was inspired, I think, by a post I wrote in 2008 on Nudge: Improving Decisions About RSS Usage which described an idea developed by US economist Richard Thaler and other behavioural economists who “want to highlight the best option, while still leaving all the bad ones open. … Rather than the state mandating solutions which aim to bring about positive benefits to society or to individuals, people are made aware of the benefits of the preferred option, but are left free to make their own decisions. In this case rather than best practices for the provision and support of institutional Web services being mandated (which is not, in any case, possible) people in Web teams are made aware of the benefits of the preferred option, but are left free to make their own decisions.

Are you convinced?  Or do you think that the view that the Axe Man is visiting institutional Web management teams is an exaggeration and there is not need for change?   If you are worried that the Axe Man will be paying you a visit, perhaps in the autumn, after the Comprehensive Spending Review is announced, then perhaps you may want to play a more pro-active role in a centralised but informal national network of institutional Web managers.  A good start would be to create your Web team blog and leave a comment so that it can be included in the list of the early adopters amongst Web teams which have already appreciated the benefits which can be gained from greater openness and transparency. As for what the early adopters are doing, well look at the Web team and related blogs for the University of Bath, Birmingham City University, Canterbury Christ Church University,  City University, University of Essex, Edge Hill University, Glamorgan University, University of Lincoln, St Andrews University, UCL or the University of York, the aggregated blog provided by Scottish Web Folk, the departmental ECS blog at the University of Southampton or the individual blogs provided by Anthony Leonard, Claire Gibbons and Martin Hamilton.

I’m sure there will be other relevant blogs, provided either by teams or individuals, but their value to the community is diminished if the content is not easily accessible to the community.  So if you want to strengthen the community, please make sure that it is included in the list.

Stifling Innovation and Getting in the Way of Users

“Is Flipboard Legal? http://bit.ly/d20eC1 >> interesting how copyright often seems to be in the way of consumers when it comes to progress” tweeted Jonathan Grimes recently. This comment on how copyright can stifle innovation and hinder benefits to users reminded me of an (unsolicited) email I received recently from the Marketing Manager of the Copyright Licensing Agency.

The email was advertising an event on ‘Intellectual Property Will Save the British Economy’. However the email footer informed me that “The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential to the intended recipient“. So it would seem that I am not allowed to mention the event!

Whilst I clearly appreciate the need for copyright I also understand how the Internet is challenging traditional views on copyright. There is therefore a need for copyright to change, just as the Internet has changed many other aspects of our life.  One would hope that organisations which are actively involved in copyright issues would be leading developments, perhaps by providing a Creative Commons licence for marketing materials. Sadly this doesn’t seem to be the case.

Meanwhile, as I discovered from a post entitled Is copyright a help or a hidrance to UK research? on the UoL Library blog the British Library has published a report entitled “Driving UK Research: Is copyright a help or a hinderance” (PDF Format).

As described in the press release “This report has been published under a Creative Commons licence, enabling others to copy, distribute, and make derivative non-commercial works. All future uses of the material contained within this report must but appropriately attributed and shared under the same licence agreement as the original publication.“  It’s good to see that the British Library understand the advantages to be gained from licencing copyrighted materials under a Creative Commons licence.

EPub Format For Papers in Repositories

EPub as a Format for Use in Institutional Repositories?

In a post entitled “File Formats For Papers In Your Institutional Repository” I suggested that depositing a HTML version of a paper might have various advantages over the PDF format which is the norm. But in light of the growing importance of mobile devices  wouldn’t it seem appropriate to make such papers available in the EPub format?

EPub is described in Wikipedia as “a free and open e-book standard by the International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF)“. The article goes on to add that “EPUB is designed for reflowable content, meaning that the text display can be optimized for the particular display device used by the reader of the EPUB-formatted book. The format is meant to function as a single format that publishers and conversion houses can use in-house, as well as for distribution and sale.“

In terms of the open standards used EPub consists of three specifications:

• Open Publication Structure (OPS) 2.0, contains the formatting of its content.
• Open Packaging Format (OPF) 2.0, describes the structure of the .epub file in XML.
• OEBPS Container Format (OCF) 1.0, collects all files as a ZIP archive.

The articles states that “EPUB internally uses XHTML or DTBook (an XML standard provided by the DAISY Consortium) to represent the text and structure of the content document and a subset of CSS to provide layout and formatting. XML is used to create the document manifest, table of contents, and EPUB metadata. Finally, the files are bundled in a zip file as a packaging format.“

Using the EPub Format

This sounds interesting so I converted the HTML version of my recent paper on “Empowering users and their institutions: A risks and opportunities framework for exploiting the potential of the social web”  into EPub format and added it to my library of ebooks on my iPod Touch using the Stanza application.

The accompanying images show how the paper is displayed. The first image illustrates the page turning style of navigation provided using EPub and the second image illustrates an embedded image.

The paper is also available from Opus, the University of Bath’s institutional repository service.   should mention that the URL for the EPub file is http://opus.bath.ac.uk/17484/5/i4.epub. I discovered that entering the URL into a browser on my iPod Touch allowed me to view the document in the Stanza application. On a normal PC users will probably not have a viewer set up to render this format, which may cause some confusion.

As might be expected for a format which uses XHTML the conversion from the XHTML original was a simple operation. I should add that I also experimented with converting a PDF version of the paper to EPub but this resulted in various problems due, I think, to the way in which the two-columns used in the paper were linearised.

Revisiting the Issue of Formats for Use in Repositories

This initial experiment seemed to show that creating an EPub version of a paper in a repository can be done quite easily.  However the ease of doing this may have been due to the availability of a HTML version of a paper; doing this on a large-scale may be time-consuming if HTML formats of papers are not available.

Let’s revisit the question of what formats for papers should we be seeking to deposit in institutional repositories?

From a preservation perspective the advice from archivists tends to be that you should preserve the original master copy. In many cases this is likely to be MS Word, although other popular formats will probably include Open Office and LaTeX.

From an interoperability perspective an open standard is preferable. I would suggest that rather than making use of a specific DTD designed for scholarly publishing we should use a well-established and popular existing open format – HTML (in whatever version).

If we wish to maximise the take-up of our repositories whilst minimising the  effort in processing the files it seems to me that we should explore ways of creating derivative versions from the master source.  So rather than uploading a PDF shouldn’t we be uploading the master file and creating a PDF automatically form this resource?  And rather than creating an EPub file, as I have done, shouldn’t the repository software create  the EPub file from a HTML version of the file?  And whilst I acknowledge that authors may not wish to make their original document (in, say MS Word or Open Office format) available to others and would regard the interoperability aspects of PDF as a feature rather than a flaw there should be nothing to stop the master file being stored in the repository but not openly accessible.

Is anyone thinking along these lines?

A Tweet Takes Me To Catalonia

At the end of the month I’m going on holiday to Spain which I’ll be combining with some work.  I’ll be giving a talk on “What can We Learn From Amplified Events?” at the University of Girona. The trip is a consequence of a tweet I posted in December:

Can someone tell me what language ttp://bit.ly/6jgzsI is in. And also is there a tool for guessing the language of a page.

I noticed the page from a referrer link to my blog and was intrigued by the following:

Un article clau, que no deixa indiferent, és el de Brian Kelly al seu blog UK Web Focus: “I Want To Use Twitter For My Conference” on exposa bones pràctiques en l’ús de twitter per organitzar un congrès o conferència. Les entrades de Kelly són molt rellevants i es tracta d’un blog que trobo de seguiment obligat, igual que Mashable, Community Roundtable o Social Media Today. Kelly té una entrada rellevant que hauria de seguir:“I Want To Use Twitter For My Conference”

Per entendre la relació apassionant entre twitter i blogging, Brian Kelly ha resumit idees clares en la seva entrada A Twitter Feed For This Blog i sobretot a Can Your Blog Survive Without Twitter? Jo encara estic en fase experiental en la meva arquitectura digital social. M’ha ajudat molt. (Per cert, en aquesta darrera entrada hi surt el meu retweet de l’article de Brian Kelly. Gràcies!)

I quickly discovered that the post was in Catalan and, via the suggestion that I use Google Translate, I was able to understand the meaning of the post:

A key item, not indifferent, Brian Kelly is UK Web Focus on their blog: “I Want To Use Twitter For My Conference” which sets out good practice in using Twitter to organize a congress or conference. The entries are very relevant and Kelly is a blog that I follow up required, just like Mashable, Community Roundtable and Social Media Today. Kelly has a relevant entry to be followed: “I Want To Use Twitter For My Conference”

To understand the fascinating relationship between twitter and blogging, Brian Kelly has clear ideas outlined in your post to A Twitter Feed For This Blog and especially Can Your Blog Survive Without Twitter? I’m still in my phase experiental digital social architecture. Helped me a lot.(Incidentally, this last entry, there goes my retweet article by Brian Kelly. Thanks!)

The blog post was written by Miquel Duran – and he was one of the people who responded to my tweet.  Via Google Translate I found that Miquel’s post began “If I must be frank, I was somewhat surprised the evolution of Twitter as a tool for communication and social networking. Indeed, as Facebook has changed to have features of twitter. From my professional point of view, twitter can do three things now: to present an idea, concept or something (a conference, an event calendar … in short) (unidirectional), retrasmetre an event in which different people use same hashtag (semibidireccional), generating conversation (usually public, but can also be closed) (bidirectional).“

I subsequently discovered that Miquel is a Chemistry professor at the University of Girona and on his English language blog I recently read his post on Can a scientific meeting be amplified? (9gisem – v) and learnt about The IX Girona Seminar, an amplified conference for which:

First of all, we encourage all attendants and people outside the physical meeting to tweet and use hashtag#9gisem. Remember that the IQC will tweet through its nicks @iqcudg and @iqcgi, while the C4D will tweet by means of @c4dudg.

Presentations will be recorded by the UdG Library, and deposited in the UdG open-access digital library. All lectures must sign a written agreement. Indeed, if they prefer not to be recorded, it is perfectly fine.

Abstracts and powerpoint-like presentations will be gathered in social networking services like Slideshare.com.

We have, it seems, shared interest in amplified events so I’m pleased to be able to give a seminar on this topic, which I describe in more detail in a video summary about the talk. And I’m also looking forward to visiting Catalonia and will have a few days in Barcelona before travelling to Girona.   It will be a particularly good time to visit the region since, as I have learnt, FC Barcelona won the Word Cup :-)

Without the tweet and without the referrer link to my blog we wouldn’t have made the connection.  So if anyone asks me if Twitter has any relevance for researchers I can provide evidence that it does.

Finally should add that I’ve created a brief video which introduced the seminar. The video is available on YouTube and embedded below – and, as an experiment, I’ve used Google Translate to translate the captions to Catalan. Does machine translation have a role to play in translating such short snippets, I wonder?