Defend this Tory MP (yes, really!)

Whilst reading the Guardian’s RSS feed on my iPod Touch on the bus yesterday I came across an article entitled “The internet – a threat to free speech?“. The opening sentence was intriguing “It’s probably not the best time to be seen defending an MP, but here goes“. In the article Padraig Reidy described how “Conservative MP Nadine Dorries has been pilloried for likening the Daily Telegraph’s handling of the MPs’ expenses story to “torture” – drip-feeding information and keeping MPs waiting nervously by the phone each morning, awaiting the dreaded call“. And this complaint, it seems,  was published on her blog, in which Nadine Dorries questioned the motives of the Telegraph and its owners, the ­Barclay brothers.

Now although I have little sympathy for Tory MPs, I am concerned with the news that “solicitors acting for the Telegraph and the Barclay brothers sent [a] complaint about  not just to Dorries, but to her internet service provider, TDMWeb” which resulted in Dorries’ blog being taken down by the ISP. And although the blog was later restored, it seems that the material the Telegraph and the Barclays found so offensive has been removed.

The Blog of Nadine Dorries MP was launched in August 2006. It has a blog policy on the home page stating:

“It’s simple. Be nice. If you try and misinterpret the position I have laid out in a blog; if you swear, are rude, abusive, aggressive or threatening, I will not publish. If you want to be any of the above, there are lots of other sites you can go to.

This blog is civil, respectful and will try always to be caring (except when in verbally, armed, political combat) I will not tolerate the harsh political, aggressive tones accepted on other blogs. Anyone who breaks these rules will be sent to the naughty step until they learn to behave. I have a very keen nose for Trolls, so beware.“

Although I’ve not read any of the posts on the blog I’m pleased that an MP has been blogging for that length of time. And I’m very concerned that a newspaper can insist that a critical blog post can be removed and that the ISP will cave in. A clear example of the dangers of flaws in the legal system which can cause an ISP to cave into such threats. And we should be pleased we won’t experience such problems in our sector.

Of could we? I recently looked at the “IT ACCEPTABLE USE POLICY” at the University of Bath, which covers us of blogs hosted at the University. This states that “You must not use University computing services to harass, defame, libel, slander, intimidate, impersonate or otherwise abuse another person“. It goes on to state that a breach of the AUP can include “Copyright infringement“. Hmm. A search reveals I’ve written several blogs posts containing the words ‘George Bush’ – and they were unlikely to have been complementary! And I’ve also embedded various images, YouTube videos, etc. which may infringe copyright. So if this blog was hosted on the University of Bath blog server there could be a risk that I could face pressure to moderate my posts. A very slight risks, I’ll admit, and I would be prepared to justify the content I’ve published. But if the IT Services department was as easily intimidated as the provider of Dorries’ blog, there might be a risk.

I’ve also recently come across consortia agreements which contained a clause that organisations would not publish content which critical of other signatories (this wasn’t the exact wording, please note).  So if, for example, JISC has signed up to such an agreement and I was posting on a JISC Involve blog, I might not be able to post anything critical of other partner organisations. Now I don’t think such possibilities are likely. But, in light of the Nadine Dorries incident I think we need to be careful.

I could imagine some academics or academic disciplines in which one could  envisage tensions between the individual and the institution. And the clause in the JISC Involve blog terms and conditions which states that JISC has the “right (though not the obligation) to, in JISC’s sole discretion (i) refuse or remove any content that, in JISC’s reasonable opinion, violates any JISC policy or is in any way harmful or objectionable” seems to set a particulurly worying precedent – content can be removed if someone in JISC deems it “in any way harmful or objectionable“. I wonder if this post, which expresses concerns over this clause, could be considered objectionable and subject to removal if my blog was hosted on the JISC Involve service?

In order to avoid such risks wouldn’t it be desirable to make use of an external blog provider will whom one has a disinterested relationship? And if the service provider in based overseas we might avoid the pressures which have occurred in the Dorries blog case. WordPress pr Blogger, anyone? And that includes MPs such as Nadine Dorries.

You Care About Innovation? Then Tell Me What You Think, Not Who You Work For!

I recently commented how Twitter provides a means for not only finding out and discussing new ideas but also establishing and developing new professional relationships. And sometimes the contacts may take place initially in the blogosphere which can then be supported by discussions, or even just listening, on Twitter.

But how easy do we make it for others to establish new contacts and engage in discussions in this way?  I was thinking about this in the context of a comment made recently by Nicole Harris who described how “the fact that I am connected to JISC in my e-mail address is important…“. As I wanted to read Nicole’s blog to see what else she’d written on this topic I Googled “Nicole Harris JISC Blog” -  and found that her staff page on the JISC Web site was the first hit. This page provided contact details (including her JISC email address) and a brief summary of her areas of work – but no link to her blog. I had to scan through the Google results more carefully before finding her JISC Access Management Team blog – and, interestingly the link was to a post entitled “The opinions expressed on this blog are only the opinions of…?” which concluded with the questions:

- As a manager at JISC, should my blog posts reflect my personal opinions or that of the corporate body of JISC?

- How can senior managers within our organisations best understand the role of web2 platforms so we don’t get our wrists slapped for being vocal on such platforms?

- Should we be vocal on such plaforms?

- Should policies be governed by communication mode (i.e. blogging), platform (JISC Involve versus general WordPress) or job role (would this policy be different for me and mark, who now lives in JISC Collections but continues to blog with me)?

Now a discussion about the contents of a blog is worthy of another post. In this post my interest is in how one’s active participation in innovation can be surfaced for the wider community. Shouldn’t it be the address of the blog which is included in one’s profile in various social networking services (e.g. Link-in).  And shouldn’t a staff page on one’s organisational Web site link to the place where views and opinions are being surfaced and discussions take place?

Surely if you care about innovation (which I know Nicole does) then you’ll make it easy for your user community and your peers to find out what you think and help then to engage in the discussions and debate? And these days that is increasingly likely to take place on blogs and via Twitter. And the debate never took place on instituional Web sites, did it?

Pupils to Study Twitter and Blogs in Primary Shake-up

It was announced in the lead article in yesterday’s Guardian “Pupils to Study Twitter and Blogs in Primary Shake-up” (and note this was the main section of the paper, and not the education supplement).

There have already been a number of blog posts about this headline, ranging from the sceptical (”It’s already bad enough having students checking their mobile phones for text messages every five minutes. Soon they’ll all be Twittering as well!“) to the neutral. But in my initial skim though the search results I couldn’t find any positive responses. So I’ll position myself in this space.

John Bangs, head of education at the National Union of Teachers was quoted in the article saying “It [the report] seems to jump on the latest trends such as Wikipedia and Twitter“. So once again, it would seem, defenders of the status quo are dismissive of innovation as being merely trends (the term ‘fads’ is sometimes used in this context) with the implication that is detracts from traditional areas of study.

My view is that there is a need to engage young people from a early age in understanding communications technologies, especially those they are likely to be using before they become adults. And understanding how micro-blogging tools such as Twitter and Yammer (and related technologies such as SMS messages) work, their subtle differences and the ways in which they can be misused is a new media literacy skill which young people need to develop.

Now Andy Powell pointed out that the “twitter terms of service prevent use by primary age children“. But for me this is not a show-stopper: terms of conditions can change and the term “Twitter” may be being used to describes a range of micro-blogging applications and not just the Twitter services itself.

I would expect many in the higher and further education sectors to particularly welcome this news, as ensuring that student arriving at college or university will several years of experience of such technologies should help to ensure that they can make use of such communications and collaborative tools more effectively when begin their studies.

And I find this announcement particularly interesting coming as it does that day after Ewan McIntosh, in the closing plenary talk at the recent JISC09 conference, praised the Twitterers in the audience who were engaging in active learning and discussions during his talk, whilst others were being passive consumers – which is particularly ironic as JISC and many learning developers are actively seeking ways in which innovation can enrich learning experiences. Perhaps in a few year’s time those senior managers will be seeking help from their children – or possibly grand-children – on how to make effective use of such micro-blogging services.

Metrics For Measuring The Impact Of Blogs

I have an interest in approaches to measuring the impact of Web 2.0 services such as blogs – and this is an area of work which is being discussed with our funders, JISC and MLA.

The conventional approach when engaged in such activities could be to carry out a  literature search (which of course these days tends to mean Google, especially for Web-related areas of work).

Sometimes, however, rather than having to search for information, the information comes to you. What do I mean by this? On this blog’s admin page I recently noticed a referrer link from a post on the Intelligent Measurement blog which provided details of the Eleven Evaluation Blogs. This contained a link to a list of 11 blogs that focus on evaluation published by the American Evaluation Association (which included the Intelligent Measurement blog).

Incoming links are normally from pages which have a author-created reference to a post on the blog. However last year WordPress announced a new feature on blogs hosted in WordPress.com which “show[s] posts related to yours a little section at the end [of the post]“.

So resource discovery doesn’t have to mean going to a search engine – instead blog posts of interest to you can arrive in your blog based on the title of and content of your blog posts. So if I write a blog post entitled “Metrics For Measuring The Impact Of Blogs” I might discover incoming links for possibly related posts automatically embedded at the bottom of this post.

It will be interesting to see how well this works.  And will we be able to say that “blessed are the blog authors for they shall find what they seek”?

Guerilla Accessibility Researchers

The recent Dev8D Developer Happiness Days provided an environment for developers in the JISC development community (and more widely) to engage in rapid software development. As the “Dev8D produces rapid results” post described “Day three of Developer Happiness Days is only just beginning but two ideas have already been made real by the keen coders here“.

As I attended only for parts of the first two days of the event I’ll not blog about the event – if you’d like to hear more about what happened I suggest you look at some of the search results for the ‘dev8d’ tag. However the enthusiasm I came across from developers who could see tangible outputs being produced over a period of a few days (although the more significant outputs will probably have been finalised over the following week) I’ve recently seen echoed in another context.

David Sloan, a researcher based at the University of Dundee (and co-author of several of our joint papers on Web accessibility)  recently announced, on Twitter, the launch of his blog. And in a post entitled “Sad Professors” David described his frustration with “the slow process of peer reviewing” and went on to add that “If I find accessing the research I need can be challenging what about the people who are making day to day decisions that might affect the accessibility of the resources they produce, and who could benefit from the results of research?” This is a heart-felt plea from someone who sees clearly the tangible benefits that his accessibility research can have for people with disabilities.

Coincidentally a few days after reading David’s blog post in which he criticised slow peer-reviewing processes, I received an email saying that  a paper on “Accessibility 2.0: Next Steps For Web Accessibility” authored by myself, David and several others had been published in the Journal of Access Services, Vol.6 Issues 1 & 2, 2009, pp. 265-294. That was the good news – the bad news was that the deadline for submissions was 30 September 2007:-(

However rather than simply complaining about the seemingly glacial processes of engaging in publishing research findings in peer-reviewed publications David has decided to engage in  guerilla accessibility research. This is “work typically done in a short period of time, to answer a very specific question, or target a very particular group of web users and published online in a (usually) easy to find place, such as a blog“.

David goes on to add that:

As a bonus … research written for the web is generally easier to read than an academic paper, and easy to extract the key points. It will be peer-reviewed, but after publication. If the work is good, people talk about it; if it’s of poor quality, reaction in the blogosphere will be swift. And more and more often, the results of this work are referenced in academic literature, yet I’ll bet is of more direct impact to the people it aims to inform – web designers and developers, assistive technologists, policy makers and anyone else who needs accessibility information quickly.

In David’s first post on his blog he admitted: “I succumbed! After resisting a blog for years, joining Twitter made me realise that I do actually have things to say on a fairly regular basis, things that other people just might be interested in reading” He went on to confess that “Yep, I work in a university, where there is a culture of publishing information at conferences and peer-reviewed journal papers – not always the easiest (or quickest) way to share information. This means we sometimes neglect more direct (and to be honest, probably more effective) routes – such as blogs like this“.

Perhaps we could say, to paraphrase a recent post, that in the research community “slowly, one by one, the lights are switching on“. David’s “The 58 Sound” blog should be a must read for anyone with interests in Web accessibility and usability.

The Long Tail of the Topless Swedish Model

What is the usage profile like for a typical blog post on this blog? I suspect the statistics for the post on “Are You Able?” is fairly typical (although, as I confessed recently I did pimp up this post on Twitter.

What we can see is the post was viewed by most users on the day it was published, with a steady drop after that, although there was a slight increase in the numbers of viewers on the Monday after the weekend. It was also pleasing to note that most uses have been via the syndicated RSS feed. This is good news and provides evidence that much greater use is being made of RSS readers, by readers of this blog at least.

But let’s look at another blog post to see a very different usage profile. As can be seen we again saw a peak of about 200 views  (again mostly views of the syndicated feed) on the day the post was published. But since the post was published there has been a long tail of daily views of the post and with a current total of 1,946 views on 23^rd February 2009, most of the views of this post have taken place in the weeks and months after it was published.

What’s the reason for the difference? Although it may be felt that there aren’t significant differences as, over time, the Are You Able post might have a long tail of views. I’ll address that point by concluding this post with the usage statistics for a post published around the same time as the one mentioned above. And the title of that post “Pinky and Perky and Swedish Topless Model Caught in Use as Learning Objects” might give a indication for its popularity.

Yes, you’re right. This post is so popular because of the numbers of people searching for “topless model” and “Swedish topless model“. And I’ve been caught out for the unethical approach of using an inappropriate title with the sole intention of boosting the blog’s usage figures. Well, not (quite) true in my opinion. I did have a legitimate interest in how use of such phrases could effect the amount of traffic. But I also have a need to think of new titles for blog posts (I’ve published over 500 posts, and I can’t call them all stuff I think is interesting about Twitter, Facebook, …). And I’ll continue to think of puns and word plays for the titles of the blog posts – and I know I’m not alone in this.  I will, though, try to ensure that the titles are relevant to the post (there was a photograph of a topless Swedish model included in the post) – but a post called “Britney Spears nude” purely to pull in the traffic would be inappropriate (as well as showing that I’m not up-to-date with the latest pop babe).

But what about concerns that although it may help to motivate me as the author to think up interesting titles, this can skew the usage figures may may be requested by funding agencies? My response is that there are many ways to enhance usage statistics – as I illustrated in a post on  Lies, Dammed Lies, Blog Statistics and Unexpected Spikes. So for me, if funding bodies wish to request inappropriate metrics, then that is their prerogative. But at least I’ve been open about my awareness that the usage statistics are flawed. And hopefully going public about the dangers of over-simplistic metrics will discourage the civil servants and bean-counters from mandating their use.

As I mentioned above in order to provide a meaningful comparison a graph of the usage statistics for a post on Butler Group Report on “Enterprise Web 2, published on 11^th December 2008, a week after the Swedish model post, is shown. As can be seen, after the first week the number of views dropped off sharply, confirming, I believe, the reasons for the popularity of the Swedish model post.

Now isn’t it strange that the Swedish topless model has the long tail and not Pinky and Perky? I guess she must be a mermaid.

Entering the Edu Blogger 2009 Awards

I know from recent discussions that some people don’t like awards being given to bloggers for various reasons (blogging is a personal activity; awards can be divisive; etc.). But although there may be an element of truth in such comments I also feel that there can be benefits providing in entering such competitions.  For me entering a blog post in an international Edu Bloggers scholarship contest allows me to reach a much wider audience and to have the potential that this wider audience can provide feedback on my ideas and also, perhaps, be influenced by the topic of my post. And, to be honest, much of my work is about seeking to influence the educational sector in making effective use of networked technologies.  I may be getting on a bit, but I still feel passionate about such things!

Tomorrow’s post will provide me with the challenge of saying something important and influential in 200-300 words. And that in itself will provide me with a valuable learning opportunity – Twitter has helped me develop skills in writing pithy comments in 140 characters and my peer-reviewed papers are often about 5,00 words long. But how will I do in a middle distance event?

Impact Of This Blog On My Publication Record

Does The “Blogging Bug” Affect Academic Publishing?

Martin Weller, Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University, recently wrote a blog post on Blogging impacts on formal academic output in which he describes how the numbers of his published articles had declined since being “bitten by the blog bug“. He didn’t regard this as necessarily a bad thing, though, as Martin feels that “Blogging meets these needs [to share ideas and fulfill a creative urge to write] better than formal publications” and the benefits of networking, which was an important factor in submitting papers to conferences can now be achieved using online communications technologies such as blogs and micro-blogs.

My Publishing History

Martin asked if anyone else noticed a similar trend. So I checked my publication record – the figures are illustrated in the accompanying diagram.

I  started to write papers for peer-reviewed journals and conferences seriously in 2004 with four papers being published: two based on a JISC-founded QA Focus which I was the project manager of, one on standards and the fourth a short paper I co-authored with Andy Powell and Pete Johnston, then colleagues at UKOLN. Interestingly, although one of the QA Focus papers was co-authored by fellow team members the second was written jointly with staff from the University of Strathclyde, following a discussion in the pub after I gave a seminar in Glasgow.

The following year another four papers were published which cover three of my main areas of interest: Web accessibility, social networks and interoperability.  Again three of the papers were written with contacts I had made professionally but another one arose from discussions in a pub in Bath, at a Semantic Web Southwest meeting.

My most productive year for publications was 2005 with nine papers published, covering accessibility, social networking and standards. In retrospect this was the year in which I had gained the confidence that I had something worthy of publishing, the necessary writing skills, a good appreciation of the effort needed and contacts who I knew could contribute to a joint papers.

By 2006 I was able to further develop ideas on Web accessibility and standards and contribute to a short paper in a new area which I suspected would be of increasing relevance to myself and UKOLN, preservation of Web resources. A total of six paper were published that year.

The UK Web Focus blog was launch in November 2006, so during 2007 I was developing my skills in writing blog posts and responding to comments. But I still managed to publish four papers in the year, on accessibility, open standards and the first on Web 2.0 – the lead author of this latter paper, incidentally, was Mike Ellis whom I first got talking to in a pub in Leicester after the UK Museums on the Web conference.  “Let’s write a paper” was my parting shot to Mike as he left the pub – which we went on to do (and subsequently much more).

Six further papers were published in 2008, together with two contributions to books.  The papers included one on Web site preservation with fellow members of the JISC PoWR project (I was correct in 2007 when I felt this would be an important area). The final paper of the year was an invited paper which was presented at the Bridging Worlds Conference in Singapore. The co-authors for that paper included people I had met once at a workshop in Wales, had met at a conference several year’s ago but re-established informal contact through Twitter  and one person who I have met primarily via blog posts, blog comments and on Twitter.

Discussion

Preamble

The first comment I should make is that I’m not attempting to suggest that there is any equivalence in quality between my papers and Martin Weller’s. My papers, for example, include those which have been accepted by a formal peer-reviewing processes, but also include short papers, papers for which only the abstract has been reviewed and, in the final example, an invited paper for presentation at an international conference. But at least I am aware of a level of consistency across my publications.

Finding Co-Authors

Writing this post has given my an insight into the ways I have gone about the  task of discovering people to collaborate with in writing such papers (I’ve realised that, apart from the two books, there have been only two papers which I have written on my own). The approaches I have taken can be summarised as:

Initially the papers were a dissemination activity of a funded project (initially the QA Focus project) and this has continued with, for example the recent JISC PoWR project).

I had also supported the staff development of colleagues in my team at UKOLN and regarded joint authorship of papers as a way of developing writing skills and adding valuable content to their CVs.

Several of the papers were written with staff from our strategic partners – other JISC services with whom we have good links with and a desire to work with (and be seen to work with) including JISC TechDis, CETIS and OSS Watch.

But I was surprised when I did this analysis and found that significant numbers of my papers had been written with people with whom I had developed good social links. And this is even more important than I’d realised as the papers with strategic partners and project partners also reflected good social contacts with individuals within those organisations.

For me it seems that the social contacts can be important in the writing process. On a number of occasions a paper has arisen from discussions and a shared understanding which have taken place over several pints which has led to papers been written and accepted for publication.  More recently it seems that discussions based abound blog posts and on Twitter have served to support the social lubrication when a pint (or two) of real ale was not available.

Quality Issues

Discussions based on the content of blog posts supported by getting to know people on Twitter may have helped to build links with authors and potential authors, but has blogging affected the quality of the papers themselves? I feel my papers have improved in quality, although clearly this would be expected as one gains experience and gets a better understanding of the topics of the papers.

But I also feel that blogging has been beneficial to the process of writing papers. I’ve used my blog as an open notebook, recording ideas which previously I may have forgotten when it came around to writing a paper. And as the ideas have been exposed to a wide audience I have benefitted from comments I have received (and perhaps even a lack of comments which may possibly that the idea isn’t too outrageous).

And as a number of my papers have been about observing how the world is approaching particular uses of technologies (such as Web accessibility) I’ve made use of blogs and microblogs (both as an author and reader) in order to gain a better understanding of patterns of usage.

Dissemination

The dissemination aspect of the blog for my papers is self-evident. For papers presented at conferences I normally publish something on this blog. Over the past six months of so I have also recorded my talk on video, providing an additional dimension for those who prefer the more chatty explanation of the ideas to the more formal prose of the scholarly publication.

Conclusions

Returning to the question posed by Marin Weller “Does the ‘Blogging Bug’ Affect Academic Publishing?” I would say it does. But for me, unlike Martin, I feel it has enhanced the quality of my publications, enhanced awareness of the papers and the ideas they have explored and widened my circle of peers with whom I collaborate with.

And although I recognise that thing may be different in other disciplines and for people with different working styles and organisational priorities (e.g. the RAE) for me blogging and engaging with blogs (reading other blogs and commenting on them) is now an essential part of my paper-writing process.

Should Projects Be Required To Have Blogs?

The Context

Last week CETIS’s Mark Power started off a brief Twitter debate when he asked “Is the use of project blogs becoming too formalised by JISC? Still strikes me that many set one up simply because they feel they *should*“.

Amber Thomas, a JISC Programme manager, responded by informing the Twitter community that she was “interested in what you all think about project blogs. for lightweight projects we like the idea of enforced transparency” concluding this request with “… thats easier said than done. we don’t expect every project blog frequently but it does provide the chance to aggregate easily“.

The Tweet Debate

The responses received over the next few hours included:

Brian Kelly: @MarkPower I disagree. Project blogs mean words get written, content is public and content is syndicable. let’s encourage such openness!

Sheila McNeil: @briankelly but how much really gets written in project blogs? I think still an onerous task for many

Owen Stephens: @ambrouk don’t necessarily think you shouldn’t mandate, but keep in mind you are mandating a tech/platform not attitude. What to achieve?

Andy Powell: @MarkPower blogging is an attitude not a technology, so simply “setting one up” doesn’t necessarily lead to results anyway

Amber Thomas: project blogging: so … noone says make it mandatory, some say strongly encourage, some say don’t. good blogging good, bad blogging bad. ok

Brian Kelly: @ambrouk bad blogging ok as part of learning proces. Allow mistakes please

Amber Thomas: @markpower scoping a Call as we speak where we want to make it mandatory to use a blog or wiki

Paul Walk: @MarkPower not sure that JISC is culpable – but there are definitely examples of project blogs where you wish they hadn’t felt the need

Amber Thomas: @sheilmcn i guess community engagement and collaboration are one thing, reflection is another, transparency of progress is another again???

Andy Powell: @MarkPower blogging is an attitude not a technology, so simply “setting one up” doesn’t necessarily lead to results anyway

Mark Power: @andypowe11 Exactly right…that’s why they won’t always work for a project and why the use of them shouldn’t be mandatory…not that they

Paul Walk: @ambrouk the attitude of ‘publish early, publish often’ is worth cultivating. But team blogs are often terrible. Encourage – don’t mandate

Amber Thomas: ..but is the issue that they create extra “noise” that makes it hard to spot the real voices amongst the dutiful posts?

Brian Kelly: @ambrouk Project managers should encourage ‘noise’ and use good filtering tools . Noise is better than silence!

Paul Walk:  @ambrouk @briankelly ‘noise is better than silence’ just doesn’t work for lots of ppl – especially researchers. It’s not appropriate for all

Now as Paul Walk’s last tweet was preceded by “@andyramsden nah – that one wasn’t James’s fault surely. The Calamity will come in the second half. The dropped ball came close though” we can see that this discussion was taking place at around 10pm, while people were also watching the Spain vs England match live on the TV. I think from this dialogue we can see that a useful discussion can take place using Twitter, and that JISC are getting their money’s worth from their investment in UKOLN and CETIS, with us (together with a number of others) being on call on Wednesday evenings, even when we are in the pub watching England, once again being beaten!

My Thoughts

But what of the discussion itself? Should projects be required to have blogs? I think the Twitter debate brought out many of the important issues, but as Mark Power commented “twitter [is] not the best for such an in-depth discussion really“. However I do think it is worth exploring these issues in more depth.

I would very much agree with Amber’s comment on the need for transparency for JISC-funded project work and, as a couple of people commented, blogs can provide a simple lightweight way in which projects can make visible what they are doing, what they are thinking and what they are planning – and feedback can be easily obtained using blog comments.

However concerns were raised regarding the time and effort in may take to write blog posts, the associated (writing) skills needed and the dangers of too much information being published. There are also the dangers that blog posts will be written for their own sake, so that contractual requirements or expectations will be achieved to little concrete benefit.

But surely skills in writing useful blog posts will only be gained through experience? And we should remember that blog posts can be useful for a variety of purposes: not only should project managers find blog posts useful in seeing how project work is progressing and seeing how the project is engaging with its user community but benefits can be gained by other project partners (through open sharing)  and by the intended user community. There can also be a public record which might prove useful if project staff leave.

The benefits of syndication of blog posts, which allow the content to be easily viewed on various devices as well as on a range of RSS readers should also be considered. And this is where filtering capabilities and other visualisation tools (e.g. Wordle) may help programme managers and other interested parties to have access in ways which are appropriate to their specific interests.

Having said that, I’d still avoid a formal contractual requirement for project blogging, preferring, instead, an expectation that the benefits of  open engagement with the key stakeholders and ease of use and reuse of the content would be provided. I would hope then that the bidding process would see projects which fulfilled such requirements would be funded. This approach, it should be noted, should also be future-proofed, allowing  new technologies (Podcasting, micro-blogging or whatever)  to be included in the range of options.

So for me, project blogging would be a strong should rather than a must. But how do we ensure that blogs are useful? We all have come across the good, informative and perhaps opinionated blog with a clear voice and a passion which engages our interests – and this is no doubt something we would like to see more of. But how do we get there? And what about the dangers that we’ll end up with bland team blogs? Are such blogs an inevitable part of a learning process and better than no blog at all? Or are counter-productive?

What’s are your view of blogs to support project work?

Growing Blog

I’ve just noticed that on 13^th January 2009 the UK Web Focus was included in WordPress.com’s list of the top growing blogs.

It’s been a while (over a year) since the blog was included in this list. I thought it would be interesting to see when the blog had been included in such daily lists.  It seems that WordPress.com provides a search interface for the blogs it hosts, and this helped my to find  record of the occasions when my blog was in the list of growing blogs. The details were:

• 13 Jan 2009:  No. 13 in list
• 8 Jan 2008:  No. 78 in list
• 3 Apr 2007:  No. 11 in list
• 20 Mar 2007:  No. 26 in list
• 7 Feb 2007:  No. 81 in list
• 15 Dec 2006:  No. 1 in list
• 20 Nov 2006:  No. 73 in list

There was also one occasion when a specific blog post was found to be one of the most widely read posts in a 24-hour period: the post on “UK Universities on Facebook” published on 9^th November 2007.

These metrics may be of interest to those who feel that there  is a need for objective and measurable criteria for determining the effectiveness of blogs – although, as will as Web statistics, remember the mantra hat there are lies, dammed lies and Web statistics :-)

500 Posts and Counting

This is the 500^th post which has been published on the UK Web Focus blog since it was launched on 1^st November 2006. That comes to an average of over 4 posts per week since the launch just over 2 years ago.

I’m pleased that I’ve maintained a consistent level of productivity. I made a decision shortly after the blog was launched to use it for sharing my thoughts and ideas, including those which were at an early stage of development, rather than using the blog purely for dissemination of well thought-out ideas or completed actions and work activities. And I’m pleased at the level of and quality of responses I’ve received, even to ideas which have been at a very early stage of development.

I’m also pleased to see that the numbers of visits to the blog continues to grow, with a particular rise in the last six months of 2008 (although, as I’ve commented previously,  these figures don’t always reflect reality).

Blog usage up to January 2009

But what of the future? In order to try and provide slightly more focus for this blog I will be using UKOLN’s recently-launched Cultural Heritage blog to write about topics which are more directly related to use of the Web by (public) libraries, museums and archives and will be using the JISC PoWR blog to write about issues related to the preservation of Web resources. I intend to continue to write regular posts on this blog on topics such as Web 2.0, standards and accessibility – and I’ll continue to invite your feedback and comments.

Why I’m A Fan Of The Edublog Awards

I mentioned recently that the UK Web Focus blog had been shortlisted for the Best Educational Tech Support blog in this year’s Edublog Awards. As I commented in the post there have been criticisms of the idea of awards for blogging and Paul Walk has recently joined in the discussion.

I disagree and am pleased to have been nominated by Martin Weller andAJ Cann. And I’d like to give my reasons.

In some quarters there is a view that because of the differences between blogs it would be unfair to have an annual awards ceremony.  But equally you could argue that you can’t judge the merits of different works of fiction – and yet this is done, with the Booker awards being the best known. And as to the flaws in making worthwhile comparisons of merit, you might also argue that the Premiership isn’t about the merits of 11 footballers over a season, but the purchasing powers of American, Russian, Thai or Saudi billionaires. This may be true, but it’s also irrelevant.

I don’t feel we should be living in an ideologically-pure IT environment, independent of the complexities, challenges and flaws of the real world. Martin Weller put such differing perspectives in an historical context in his post on Cato and Cicero – and, as I said in a post based on Martin’s observation, I am on the side of realism and pragmatism. I suspect that Stephen Downes’ comment that “… the internet is already awash with really vile and intrusive commercial activity“  (which I mentioned in that post will be regarded by the purists as applicable to blog awards) is a view that will be shared by some.  Indeed I’m aware of a certain antipathy towards those involved in commercial and marketing activities from many involved in IT development.  But as I say in my talks about Web 2.0, “Web 2.0 is a marketing term” before going on to add that “there’s nothing wrong with that“. Although I should add that despite acknowledging that I live in (and benefit from) a capitalist society I haven’t benefitted financially from the 483 blog posts published in just over 2 years – and there’s no personal financial reward for the winner of the Eddies.

Being shortlisted for awards such as the Edublogs will, however, be helpful in promoting the work I am involved in.  In brief this, and the main topics covered in this blog are standards, accessibility and Web 2.0. But rather than having a one-dimensional view of these areas I also try to ensure that readers are aware of associated complexities. For example:

Web accessibility: I have pointed out the limitations of WAI’s approaches to Web accessibility and described approaches which show how WCAG can be used in context.

Standards: I have discussed the limitations of a one-dimensional view of open standards and have tried to explore reasons why open standards have failed to live up to their expectations.

Web 2.0: I have described the potential benefits of Web 2.0, but have also described failures (such as Pownce and Squirl)  in a number of Web 2.0 services.

The approaches I have taken in exploring these issues has reflected the approach I take when I give presentations – I give a personal view which I hope engages with the audience. And this is an approach I feel others should take when they set up a blog. As I have said on a number of occasions recently, for workshops aimed at staff from museums, libraries and archives, you should encourage the passions, interests and professionalism of your staff, and avoid having a blog which is clearly the product of a committee, with any hint of controversy being suppressed by the editorial processes. Avoid the temptations of the corporate blog, for users will tend to be sceptical, as a recent blog post argued.

“But how can you give clear evidence to justify the ROI for a blog?” was a question I was asked when I ran a blogging workshop recently. Now I don’t believe that responses such as “Blogs are all about the individual” would be appropriate. So I spoke about the purposes of a blog (e.g. engaging with new audience) and corresponding metrics which could be used . But in addition to figures which may indicate successful user engagement (although, of course, I do blog about the limitations of such metrics) awards ceremonies can also demonstrate the support of one’s peers – and can help in more effective promotion of one’s views.

So if you support such views and agree that this blog “manages to push at the comfort boundaries of IT services, but does so with intelligence and insight into the practical issues“ and would like to see such views being endorsed  at an international awards ceremony I’d encourage you to vote for the blog.  But if you disagree with such views, you can always vote for one of the other shortlisted nominations (I also read the eFoundations blog which I feel would be a worthy winner – although I should add that I know Andy Powell & Pete Johnston). And if you fancy being contrary, you can always vote for Paul Walk’s blog in the Best Library/Librarian blog category. Indeed as we’ve been nominated in different categories there’s nothing to stop you from voting from both our blogs. And if we both won, we’d be in the position of myself graciously accepting the award and Paul turning it down. Now that would make a wonderful publicity stunt! And as  to whether we have engineered this, on the advice of our agents, my response is “No comment” :-)

UK Web Focus Blog Nominated For Edublog Award

I’m pleased to report that the UK Web Focus blog has been nominated for the Best educational tech support blog category of the 2008 Edublog Awards. In addition my colleague Paul Walk’s blog has also been nominated in the Best librarian / library blog category.

The other blogs nominated for the Best Educational Tech Support award are The Edublogger, The Clever Sheep, The Wired Campus, Geeked, Tech Tutors, Teach42, Teacher in a Strange Land, Off on a Tangent, efoundations, JoeWoodOnline, Teachers love Smartboards and Langwitches blogs.

Now I am aware of Stephen Downes criticisms of this year’s awards (although he does ask readers of his blog to “be sure to vote“). And Stephen has cited Doug Johnson’s post “on ranking, awards and other nonsense“. But if you feel that the Edublogs awards do have a role to play I’d invite you to look at the other blogs nominated in this (and the other) categories – which might help you find new blogs which you find valuable – and, if you are so included, to vote for your preferred blog.

Martin Weller nominated my blog, stating that “rather obviously I’m opting for Brian Kelly’s blog. Brian manages to push at the comfort boundaries of IT services, but does so with intelligence and insight into the practical issues“. AJ Cann also nominated my blog and James Clay was torn, nominating Steve Wheeler’s  Learning with ‘e’ blog for the Best individual blog, although he went on to add that “Other blogs that were in the running include Josie Fraser’s SocialTech blog and Brian Kelly’s UK Web Focus. The key here was which blog did I read on a regular basis and which inspired me the most“. James went on to state that in choosing his selection for the Best educational tech support blog he “was torn between Andy Powell and Pete Johnston’s eFoundations blog and Brian Kelly’s UK Web Focus” before choosing eFoundations for this category.

But the final choice is up to you!

Lies, Dammed Lies, Blog Statistics and Unexpected Spikes

There was some discussion a while ago on standards for usage statistics for public sector Web sites. I have always been a bit suspicious of initiatives which encourage use of simplistic metrics. There’s a real danger that rather than using such data to provide evidence and to inform policies, achieving a top ranking is regarded as the main objective itself. And such temptations can lead to organisations exploring ways of maximising their figures, even if this fails to achieve any underlying benefits to the organisation or the user community.

This struck me recently when I notice a huge peak in the usage statistics for this blog on 6^th October 2008. Initially I thought the blog may have been ‘Slashdotted’, with one of my posts being cited on a popular service. But this, it seems, wasn’t the cause of the spike. I had, in fact, used the Adobe Acrobat software to create a PDF file of the blog posts.  This every individual page to be accessed. And when I discovered that the PDF file was thousands of pages long rather than the 4-500 pages I had expected, I realised that individuals posts had been retrieved on multiple occasions, as they are also grouped by month and by categories.

I hadn’t expected such retrievals to be recorded, as WordPress’s statistics page states that “we don’t count your own visits to your blog“.  But for some reason the Adobe Acrobat’s downloads have resulted in my statistics being artificially skewed.

So if you want to impress people with a sudden growth in the numbers of accesses to you blog, run a tool such as Adobe Acrobat over your blog.  If, on the other hand, you feel this is unethical, then don’t do this with the aim of massaging your figures. And fopr the sake of completeness, on 6^th October 2008 there were 1,206 visits recorded, but a more accurate figure, based on the numbers of visits the previous week, would be around 265.

Materials For Blogging and Web 2.0 Workshops For Heritage Organisations

Earlier today I ran a half-day workshop entitled “Introduction To Blogs And Social Networks For Heritage Organisations“. This workshop was commissioned by ASVA (Association of Scottish Visitor Attractions, following a seminar I gave on “Exploiting The Potential Of Blogs And Social Networks” at the Museums and Heritage Show.

The workshop made use of a series of briefing documents which have been developed to support the cultural heritage sector. As well as the documents which have been published the workshop also provided an opportunity to receive feedback on a number of additional documents we have produced, including An Introduction to Twitter and An Introduction to Seesmic (the video micro-blogging tool).

A number of other briefing document were used in two day-long workshops which were commissioned by CyMAL to support staff working in museums, libraries and archives in Wales. These events, entitled Sharing Made Simple: A Practical Approach To Social Software, provided a broader overview of the potential of Web 2.0 in cultural heritage organisations, and also addressed barriers to the take-up of Web 2.0 and strategies for addressing such barriers.

The feedback we receive on the documents (and on the need for additional documents) is an important part of the quality assurance processes for the resources. It should also be noted that we are making these documents available under a Creative Commons licence and encourage their reuse.

This approach to use of Creative Commons for resources I’ve created over the past few years has been taken primarily in order to maximise the impact of the content of the resources. And I would encourage others to do likewise. However, as Scott Leslie has recently described in a blog post on “Planning to Share versus Just Sharing” there is a real danger of encountering “frustration with ineffective institutional collaborations“. The summary of Scott’s post exhorts readers to “grow your network by sharing, not planning to share or deciding who to share with“.

This approach reflects the views expressed by Mike Ellis and myself in a paper entitled “Web 2.0: How to Stop Thinking and Start Doing: Addressing Organisational Barriers” presented at the Museums and the Web 2007 conference. As I described in blog post back in July 2007 back then the cry was “Just do it!“. A year on, despite the economic problems we’re facing, the recent US election result seems to have resulted in a more positive approach to the world and a willingness to makes changes. So perhaps our cry should now be “Set up a blog? Use Creative Commons for our resources? Yes, we can!“

Let Blog Readers Respond

In my post on Openness in HE but not Elsewhere I suggested that requiring users to agree to complex terms and conditions in order to respond to (and, even worse, view) discussions on government policies was counter-productive. A post entitled It’s not a blog if…… on the JISC Access Management Team blog is in agreement with these sentiments.

Mark Williams describes another barrier to the use of blogs for effective dialogue. In his post he complains about his “wasted effort on writing replies on a couple of blogs this week only to find that after a suitable period for much needed moderation (after all IT forums are hardly the place to endorse male vitality products) the sites are clearly not putting any replies / comments up“.  Marks feels that “If a an opinion piece doesn’t have scope for comments then that’s what it is – a magazine style opinion piece not a blog“.

I would agree with that.  Yes, there may be a cost in deleting inappropriate comments, but this need not be onerous, and I think it is worth spending some effort in allowing users to give their thoughts and comments.

Guest Post: Web 2.0 At The National Library of Wales

In the guest blog post published on 1^th October 2008 Jo Alcock Hannah Hiles described how the library at the University of Wolverhampton is engaging with use of Web 2.0.  Details of this work were included in the paper on Library 2.0: Balancing the Risks and Benefits to Maximise the Dividends which I recently presented at the Bridging Worlds 2008 conference in Singapore.

This month’s guest blog post has been written by another co-author of the paper. Below Paul Bevan, National Library of Wales describes how a national library is engaging with the opportunities provided by Web 2.0. Paul has recently been appointed to the post of Senior Research Officer (Web 2.0) and, as he describes is “very keen to work with libraries and librarians to explore all areas of emerging Web approaches“.  If you have an interest in the issues described in this post, feel free to respond to Paul, either on this blog or directly with Paul.

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The National Library of Wales is one of the great libraries of the world and has a remit to:

“collect, preserve and give access to all kinds and forms of recorded knowledge, especially relating to Wales and the other Celtic countries, for the benefit of the public, including those engaged in research and learning“

As a result our readers represent a extremely varied demographic, reflecting the diversity of our published material, archival and other collections.

The Web and the online delivery of resources has been integral to the Library’s service portfolio for many years, providing a access to its resources in a way which helps to overcome distance and availability issues. To this end, the Library has an extensive digitization programme which has provided virtual access to some of the greatest treasures in the collections through a ‘Digital Mirror‘ using innovative access methods to deliver an enhanced user experience for remote readers.

Looking to the Future: Web 2.0

We’re constantly building on this solid foundation by seeking new ways of providing access to our resources and ‘Web 2.0′ and the Social Web are key to realising the goal of enhancing our remote provision. The use of Web 2.0 approaches to achieve Library 2.0 delivery is ingrained in the new Library strategy ‘Shaping the Future’ [pdf] which outlines the Library’s desire to explore collaborative and diverse models using external resources. This will allow the Library to leverage Web platforms which are heavily focused on user engagement in order to deliver future services. Leading up to this shift in emphasis for Web developments the Library conducted a review of how a National Library might understand the concept of ‘Web 2.0′ and how we might best make use of our existing digital resources in a Web 2.0 environment.

Of course, the we’re not just looking at the way in which we can enhance our collections through new technologies and platforms – the current Web content represents a proportion of the information produced by the Library and there is a ‘hidden’ silo of professional, training and development information (some of which is exposed through the Digital Asset Management Development Wiki, as well as a range of “lost opportunities” (such as guest talks which could in the future be streamed via the Web). Beyond this there are clear examples from other organisations of best practice in using the Web to communicate internally and to share procedures and information through wikis and other technologies.

The Library has begun to increase the level of Web 2.0 services available by creating presences in online environments (including presences on Facebook and YouTube) as well as by beginning to allow reuse of its data – initially through a pilot Wikipedia project. The Library is also developing an XML feed of its events (including exhibitions and talks) through the Typo3-based content management system underlying the Library’s main website.

Third-party Web environments will be key to the future delivery of library services and we’re also actively looking to explore how the exposure of data in open formats can allow the use of leading edge user interfaces and Web front-ends. One concern for the Library is that the ’spreading out’ of services onto commercial and external sites might conflict with existing policies around accessibility, sustainability, and the commitment to bilingual access.

The Library is also host to a Welsh Assembly Government funded project to provide an innovative and flexible service delivery platform for all types of libraries in Wales. The library.wales.org Web site employs Web 2.0 technologies including social bookmarking and RSS to provide an alternative environment engaging with the public. This project explicitly includes the development of new services and the support of those services, allowing libraries to explore Web 2.0 technologies in a ’safe’ environment where best practice can be easily shared.

The Library is also home to the not-for-profit company Culturent Cymru, which has taken great steps in bringing new levels of interaction to objects from cultural repositories from all accross Wales. Culturenet Cymru projects include Community Archives Wales – where users can upload their images via Flickr – and Gathering the Jewels- which has recently launched an enhanced GIS interface.

What Next for the National Library of Wales?

The Web’s ever-changing nature provides an exciting and challenging environment for any library service and the National Library of Wales has sought to directly engage with the opportunities that Web 2.0 will offer. In order to best do this the library has recently committed to a six-month review of the possibilities of Web 2.0 and emerging Web Technologies.

In my role as Senior Research Officer (Web 2.0) I will be exploring best practice from knowledge organisations around the world as well as possible technological approaches and content partnerships. The resulting Web 2.0 Strategy will provide the Library with a chance to build upon and mainstream the work detailed above and to explore new ways of working with Library users in a networked environment. I’m very keen to work with libraries and librarians to explore all areas of emerging Web approaches, so feel free to get in touch with me at paul.bevan@llgc.org.uk.

Clogging Chris Gets Blogs

Chris Sexton, Director of Corporate Information and Computing Services at the University of Sheffield, recently announced the first anniversary of her From a Distance blog which she uses to “share her work life with you“.

As Chris described her blog ”started as a way of keeping people in the department in touch with what I was doing, and as an experiment to see if I could keep it up, and whether it was useful“. After a year (and 232 blog posts) Chris concluded that “I haven’t found it a bore to write, I can usually think of something to say ( well, about 4 times a week I can), and I know from google analytics that people are reading it“.

Chris initial posts covered her participation at the Educause 2007 conference and last week Chris wrote about the Educause 2008 conference. Her post on Google Apps and Spiderman I found particularly interesting as it provided a case study of the University of South California’s experience in deploying Google Apps for Education – and in response to the questions “was it quick?”, “was it easy?” and “was in free?” the answer seems to have been no. 

Now when people ask me whether staff in IT Service departments should be writing blogs I would point them in the direction of Chris Sexton’s blog as a great example of a senior manager’s blog which is useful and informative, and ensures that the insights she gains through her participation at important international events such as Educause are shared with the wider community (and not just trapped within a closed Computing Services director’s mailing list).

Chris manages to provide a Twitter feed as well as her wortk blog, although as her Twitter id cloggingchris may indicate, this tends to cover her social interests (clog dancing, sword dancing, folk festivals and drinking real ale). And whene we where first introduced at the UCISA Management Conference in 2004 Chris and I discovered we knew each other from the rapper dancing world – but didn’t recognise each other out of costume!

Library 2.0 at the University of Wolverhampton

Guest Blog Post

The guest blog slot provides an opportunity to include some different voices and views on the UK Web Focus, which can provide a fresh insight in the various topics covered in this blog.

I’m therefore pleased to welcome this guest blog post from Jo Alcock, Academic Information Assistant for the Harrison Learning Centre at the University of Wolverhampton – although perhaps better known in some circles as Joeyanne Libraryanne for her Joeyanne Libraryanne blog. In her post Jo describes a variety of ways in which Web 2.0 services are being used and goes on to highlight some of the challenges which this approach entails. I should also add that Jo is a contributor to the paper on Library 2.0: Balancing the Risks and Benefits to Maximise the Dividends which I’ll be presenting at the Bridging Worlds 2008 Conference.

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Setting the Scene

I work at the University of Wolverhampton which has a large proportion of part-time students (some schools are up to 70% part-time). The University is also geographically spread across the region with five campuses in total. This means students do not always come into Learning Centres and often use the closest geographical centre rather than their subject specific centre. We have recently adopted a University-wide Blended Learning strategy to support the changing nature of our students, and the Learning and Information Services department are developing ways to support students from wherever they choose to study. This includes obvious things like e-journals and e-books, as well as virtual reference support and Web 2.0/Library 2.0 initiatives to support students online.

Current Initiatives

Blogs

We currently have five subject blogs (the School of Computing and IT Blog, School of Applied Sciences Blog,  School of Engineering and the Built Environment Blog, School of Humanities, Social Sciences and Languages Blog and the Wolverhampton Business School Blog to support students and staff of particular academic schools, along with an University of Wolverhampton Electronic Resources Blog for updates to services. We also have a number of project related blogs and internal communication blogs.

Social Networking

The Learning Centres have a Facebook Page which was established at the end of last year. The page includes links to relevant parts of our Web site, our aggregated RSS feeds (from our blogs) and search applications. One of the most useful features of the page are sending updates to “fans” – another way of letting users know about our services and reaching them where they already are (a quick scan of any communal PCs show numerous Facebook users!).

Wikis

We have started exploring wikis and although we do not currently have a departmental wiki we have a number of small scale wikis for sharing information.

Online calendars

I’ve included this as although it’s not usually included in general “Library 2.0″ initiatives, it’s something that we’ve found really useful. We have been using Google Calendar (see the University of Wolverhampton InfoBites Calendar) to manage our events for a few months now and it’s so much easier than updating numerous places when the timetable changes or a new event is added. Now we just update the calendar on Google and the changes are reflected wherever the calendar is embedded. Users can also subscribe to the calendar or add single events to their own calendar. We’ve also recently used it as a shared calendar for scheduling purposes for our busy induction weeks.

Barriers

There have been a number of barriers to the Library 2.0 developments, some which may have been exclusive to us but many that I imagine are shared with other libraries.

External Hosting and Software

Many of the Web 2.0 products we use are external products, often hosted externally. This has immediate issues when it comes to reliability and stability. Services change over time, which is often a positive thing but may mean that your service no longer functions in the same way you wanted it to. You may find that it suffers “downtime” whilst the software is being upgraded or simply because the servers are not reliable. You may even find that the service ends completely without warning.

This can be a big issue for institutions, and understandably so. An alternative option whilst still utilising the technologies is to use open source software but host it internally therefore passing control back to the institution. Examples of this are using the WordPress.org blogging software (rather than their hosted service at WordPress.com) and the MediaWiki software for wikis. This way, the institution can update when it wants to (and also therefore not when it doesn’t want to!) and also has greater flexibility with the functionality and style of the software.

Staff Awareness

Another issue has been lack of awareness and uncertainty about the technologies utilised. Quite often, I have found that people are pleasantly surprised when they realise how easy it actually is to use. I understand that some of the software is bewildering at first experience though, and getting over that stage if you are uncertain about the fundamentals of the technology (for example, what on earth is a wiki or a blog?!) can be a big hurdle. Something that I think is now being recognised by the profession is that more time needs to be allocated for keeping staff up-to-date and providing training or even just time during work to explore the technologies.

Culture Change

This is something I am particularly aware of, probably because I am part of the so-called “net generation”. I like to share experiences and work collaboratively, but I know this can be quite a culture change to many who are used to working in isolation and keeping their work to themselves. When you have a shared calendar for example, or a shared blog, it can take some getting used to. Clear definition of roles and expectations from the beginning can help alleviate this.

User Needs and Experience

This is one of the main issues for me – although I am a keen user of many new technologies and use a lot in my own life, I only want to adopt them at work if they make sense from a user point of view – whether this is other staff when we are thinking about a shared resource like a wiki, or our community when it is a development for users.

Over the summer we have thought a lot about the future of the blogs; whether to merge the subject blogs or keep them separate, and what the actual purpose of each blog is. There are many issues around merging the blogs – such as whether to include all subjects (not all currently have a blog) and the logistics of subscribing to your subject only. The main issue for me was to look at it from a user point of view. With many subjects all on one blog, you can use categories to create separate RSS feeds for each subject. This initially seemed like a feasible way of merging the blogs whilst still allowing users to subscribe to only their subject. However, from examining our blog stats, most of our users subscribe by e-mail, suggesting that many of them do not currently use RSS feeds. I considered having a guide on the blog and holding training sessions, but in the end decided it was too much to expect of our users and would likely put them off subscribing if it was too confusing.

Ultimately, we are here for our users and if something doesn’t make sense or isn’t of use to them, there is little point us investing time in it. For example, if Facebook fell dramatically in popularity, it would make no sense to continue to develop our Facebook page and we should instead concentrate our efforts on whatever else our users are familiar with.

This is a fundamental part of the Web 2.0 philosophy for me; have a go – if it works, great, if it doesn’t, there’s no big loss. I like to invest a small amount of time trying something and assess whether or not it is worth pursuing after you’ve given it a chance. If it isn’t or the barriers are too great, just scrap it or try something else.

How about you?  What barriers have you experienced with Library 2.0 Initiatives and how do you overcome them? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

Jo Alcock, University of Wolverhampton

100,000 Views

I’ve found it useful in the past to write about significant landmarks on this blog in order to provide some data which other bloggers may find useful in drawing parallels. And such factual data may also be useful in the various blog workshops which myself and colleagues have been running, including a workshop on “Using Blogs Effectively Within Your Library” which my colleagues Marieke Guy and Ann Chapman will be running at the ILI 2008 conference next month.

So I thought I would document the date at which the blog had reached 100,000 page views. This happened on Saturday 6^th September 2008, 1 year and 10 months after the blog was launched.

Months and Years

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Total
2006										4	1,238	2,067	3,309
2007	2,528	3,055	4,059	4,387	4,321	4,389	5,876	4,063	4,181	4,675	6,607	4,514	52,655
2008	4,713	5,350	4,522	5,414	5,025	4,856	6,388	6,314	1,458				44,040

As can be seen the busiest month was November 2007, and this was primarily due to the popularity of a blog post on UK Universities On Facebook. This has been the third most popular post, following the post on The ‘Cities Visited’ Facebook Application and, in scond place, one on TokBox – A Useful Video-Conferencing Tool Or Something Sinister?.

It’s also pleasing to note that after an extended period of stability the numbers of visits to the blog has started to increase again over the past two months, as is shown in the following graph.

Of course, we still need to remember that there are lies, dammed lies and blog statistics.

Guest Post: You’ve Got A Friend

It has been a while since I have a guest post published on the UK Web Focus blog. But as I am very keen on encouraging a debate on the role of Web 2.0 within our institutions I would like to welcome Hannah Hiles as a guest blogger.

Hannah Hiles has been Media & PR Officer for Keele University in Staffordshire since August 2006. Previously she was Keele’s Alumni Officer and before joining the University she was a journalist at The Sentinel newspaper in Stoke-on-Trent. Her views are her own and not necessarily those of Keele University.

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Keele University has been exploring the potential for communications and connections that can be found in Web 2.0 technologies.

In just 16 months of using Facebook as a corporate tool we have developed a thriving community with links spanning the globe; it has revolutionised the way we run some events, reconnected us with dozens of “lost” alumni and provided a platform where we can interact with prospective students in their own domain.

The Keele University alumni LinkedIn group in particular provides networking opportunities for our professional graduates while at the same time allowing us to learn more about their careers and tailor our services to their needs.

And all this for just the cost of my time – we have no fancy paid-for online community platforms here.

We first started using Facebook in January 2007. One of our graduates had created a group called Keele Alumni and we thought we should get in there with our own official group, so Keele Society (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2224498996) was born. We didn’t go through any committees or get approval from anyone; we just recognised the potential and seized the opportunity, little knowing how quickly Facebook would grow within just a few months.

We soon added our official Keele University Page (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Keele-United-Kingdom/Keele-University/19097243336), as well as the Keele-network only Love:Keele group (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=9189098385&ref=ts to help me find student case studies.

One of the most exciting uses of Facebook for me has been the creation of groups aimed at prospective students. Keele 2008 (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=7459213335) and Keele University 2009 (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=17727959813&ref=ts) have proved a lifeline for applicants wanting to get the lowdown on Keele from the people who know and love it best – the current students.

A team of volunteers from among our Student Academic Representatives (StARs) check the group regularly and answer any questions. Other keen students, including Students’ Union sabbatical officers, also participate. I monitor what is being said and give an official University response when necessary but usually allow the students to take the lead.

A major part of Keele University’s appeal is its friendly atmosphere, so I try to reflect that through my communication style. Our Twitter updates (http://twitter.com/KeeleUniversity are a mixture of news stories with web-links and general observations about what is happening on campus spoken in the “voice” of the University. I’m still very new to Twitter and I don’t think I have fully grasped the possibilities of its use, but it’s another opportunity for communication with prospective students, current staff and students and alumni to be explored.

The University recognises Web 2.0 as an important area for growth, so much so that developing Keele’s e-communications strategy has now been formally built into my job description.

Blog Day 2008

A tweet from joeyanne alerted me that today is Blog Day 2008.  As I only found out about this at 6.30 pm today I will have to be brief in my list of blogs that I find interesting.

The instructions for contributing to Blog Day are:

1. Find 5 new Blogs that you find interesting
2. Notify the 5 bloggers that you are recommending them as part of BlogDay 2008
3. Write a short description of the Blogs and place a link to the recommended Blogs
4. Post the BlogDay Post (on August 31st)

My blogs, which may not necessarily be new to many readers of this blog, I’m afraid are:

1. The Ed Techie blog by Martin Weller, Professor of Educational Technology at the Open University – and someone I have had valuable Twitter discussions with.
2. The unspun Electronic Museum blog, in which Mike Ellis argues passionately for the adoption of light weight Web 2.0 approaches within the museum community.
3. The Digital Curation blog in which Chris Rusbridge, in particular, provides a remarkably refreshing insights into preservation issues, even going as far to ask whether the “‘Digital Preservation’ term [should be] considered harmful?“.
4. The JISC Access Management Team blog, probably the liveliest of the blogs published by JISC programme managers.
5. I mentioned Tony Hirst’s Ouseful blog in a previous list of my favourite blogs, but as that referred to an old version of the blog I feel I’m allowed to mention this blog again, which Tony uses to write copious summaries of his prolific development activities.

And as today is Blog Day I thought this would provide an opportunity to launch the first of a series of brief video blog posts entitled Video blog 1: Why I Blog which I am publishing in order to support a workshop on “Using Blogs Effectively Within Your Library” which my colleagues Marieke Guy and Ann Chapman will be facilitating at the ILI 2008 conference.

If you are a blogger and want to give the reasons why you blog why not sign up to Seesmic and respond to my post, explaining why you blog. You never know, you might get mentioned when Marieke and Ann run the workshop.  There’s a marketing opportunity for you, especially if you are a blogging librarian.

Technorati tag: BlogDay2008

Why Don’t Members of Institutional Web Teams Blog More?

On the second day of the IWMW 2008 event Michael Nolan made the comment “If people are saying we need to communicate what we’re doing better, why do so few Web Services depts have a blog?” on the event’s live blog.

Shortly after getting back from the event Michael, a Web developer at Edge Hill University sent a message to the website-info-mgt JISCMail list in which he raised this issue with a wider audience:

At the risk of opening myself up to (probably deserved) flaming and accusations of blatant self promotion, I’ve posted to the Edge Hill Web Services blog questioning why so few other university web teams have a blog:

http://blogs.edgehill.ac.uk/webservices/2008/07/28/blogging-web-teams/

Comments and feedback welcome!

This led to a discussion on the list – and also responses to Michael’s blog post on the Edge Hill University Web Service’s team blog.

On the mailing list various reasons were suggested for the lack of blogs by members of Web teams :

• I find it hard keeping up with blogging – reading and writing, [because] I’m too damn busy with other projects.
• … our workload is so great that this sort of activity tends to sink to the bottom of the list.
  Does anyone think that such blogs would add any value over and above resources such as this list? … So, to turn the question on its head, who thinks that they could benefit from reading another web team’s blog?
• If every one of us blogged about our work, it would be very hard to sort out the chaff.

Other replied arguing the benefits of blogging suggesting the benefits of the ‘long tail’ (an obscure blog post on the intricacies of XSLT coding is likely to be of interest to perhaps small numbers of others) and how use of filtering tools should help such nuggets to be found by interested parties. Janet McNight at the University of Oxford also suggested that:

I think there’s a feeling that a ‘blog’ has to involve sustained pieces of writing, well-crafted prose, etc; when really all it needs to be is “I was wrestling with [some problem] and found [some neat
solution]: [lines of code, config, whatever]” — or “we’ve been looking into [some new technology] and these are a few of the thoughts we’ve had so far”.

I would very much agree with Janet’s comment. I feel there is a need to regard a blog as a communication rather than a publication medium. After all, many members of Web team who may be reluctant to blog are willing to make use of email lists for advice on often obscure problems – and, ironically, mailing lists tend not to have the richer structure content and software tools which can help people to filter out content which is of no interest and find the material which is.

The comments on Michael Nolan’s blog were, perhaps unsurprisingly, somewhat critical of the failures of institutional Web teams to embrace blogging (Michael has found only 4-5 examples of such blogs). Matt Machell, for example, commented that:

it often surprises me how insular the HE web development world is. It seems to talk to itself, but not to the wider web professional community

Alison Wildish responded on both the Edge Hill blog and the website-info-mgt mailing list with some considered views on the matter. She identified some of the barriers to blogging (and note that I will link to her comments on the blog as this is both easier to read, more navigable and has more easily cited URIs than the JISCMail archive) but she still felt that “there aren’t enough of us [blogging] for people to see the real value – yet! If more of us used blogs then we’d be able to gain a real picture of the work going on across all Universities“. Alison went on to list the benefits University of Bath Web Services blog are providing.

But although I would agree with Alison’s views I think there are dangers in forcing people or teams to blog (I should hasten to add that I’m not suggesting that Alison is saying this). I still feel there is a need to discuss the benefits and to gain a better understanding of best practices – and the associated dangers. And I did wonder whether, as many members of institutional Web teams are happy to contribute to mailing lists whether an email blog service, such as Posterous, might provide a lightweight approach to blogging – with this service you simplky send an email to create a blog post, which, of course, has the ‘cool uris’ and usable RSS feeds which JISCMailo lists fail to provide.

But if an email blog tool is still to heavyweight, perhaps another approach might be microblogging. We are, after all, seeing such conversational use of Twitter being used to discuss the pros and cons of team blogging, with the advantage that posts have to be kept to the limit of 140 characters – in this case, as partly illustrated, Michael Nolan raised the issue on Twitter initially, Paul Walk suggested some of the possible difficulties, Mike Ellis, with tongue in cheek, questioned whether Web managers had anything to say and Michael Nolan delivered the punch line :-)

In the screen shot shown above there are six tweets, ~ 6*140 bytes and three twitterers discussing the issue (there are only 5 active blogs, reasons why this may be, a challenge to the reasons and a witty riposte). Short and sweet :-)

But more seriously I think there are roles for a diversity of communications tools including email lists, blogs and micro-blogging tools: each will have its own strengths and weaknesses, but we need to experiment and gain experiences in order to find out what the strengths may be. And to revisit Michael’s original reflection on the need for members of Web teams “to communicate what we’re doing better” can it be really suggested that email lists are sufficient?

WordPress has Gears (and my Glass is Half Full)

WordPress have just announced the availability of WordPress Gears:

Gears? It is a browser extension like Flash or QuickTime/Media Player. However Gears works with the browser to enhance web based applications. It can create local database and file storage, and run JavaScript in the background to update them without slowing down the browser.

Gears has been in the making for over a year and is well known among the web developers. Currently it supports Firefox versions 2 & 3 and Internet Explorer versions 6 & 7. Safari 3 support is coming soon.

On WordPress.com it is used to store all images and other web page components from the admin area to the user’s PC, speeding up access and reducing unnecessary web traffic.

The speed increase is most noticeable when Internet is slow or on high latency and makes everybody’s blogging experience more enjoyable.

We’re now starting to see the development of a numbers of tools which will reduce the bandwidth requirements for using a networked application and/or allow Web-based applications to be usable offline (e.g. Google Gears).

I’m pleased with the variety of developments which are taking place behind the scenes on the WordPress.com Web site which hosts this blog.  In January 2008, for example, there was an announcement on the WordPress blog that an interface which provides access statistics for syndicated accesses to blog posts had been relaunched and a week later there was an announcement of enhancements to the interface to the Akismet spam filter. Indeed if you look at the WordPress.com blog archive for 2008 you will see a whole host of developments which have been made, many to the hosted blog environment.

This is an example of the ‘always beta’ nature of many Web 2.0 services. But not everybody likes this. Stuart Smith, for example, has commented recently on my blog that:

Part of the problem is the eternal beta syndrome that dominates the world of web apps. It means nothing is ever finished or entirely taken responsibility for.

It’s true that an ‘eternal beta’ approach could be used to deploy new developments which have not been adequately tested, to the detriment of the end user. But to me the response to this criticism is to say that ongoing enhancements to services need to be carefully managed and mechanisms are needed to allow users to quickly and easily provide their feedback.  In the case of the WordPress.com blog, the announcement are made on their developments blog, are brought to the attention of blog authors in their administrators interface and they encourage feedback – which they do receive.

When the WordPress open source software is installed locally to provide a blog service, such ongoing developments do not happen. And this, I find, somewhat irritating when I use the JISC PoWR blogwhich is hosted by the JISC on their JISC Involve blog hosting service- the blog software is somewhat dated, and hasn’t benefitted from the developments I’m used to on the UK Web Focus blog.

Perhaps the differences between my perspectives and Stuart’s are based on particular experiences we may have had. On the other hand perhaps this reflects an individual mindset – do you see software development as bringing about improvements, or are developments more likely to be to disrupt well-established working practices?  Or to put it another way, is the glass half full or half empty?  I’m pleased to say that WordPress.com blog is half full :-)  (But WordPress shouldn’t get too complacent – if the quality deteriorates, I can always take my custom elsewhere).

A Quarter of a Million and Counting

This blog has now attracted over a quarter of a million spam comments. Fortunately the vast majority are stopped by the Akismet spam filter, which is provided on the WordPress.com blog service.

But it’s quite clear that without the spam filter it would be a very time-consuming task for me to manually delete spam comments. And if I didn’t do this the effectiveness of the blog as a forum for discussions would be severely reduced.

I could change the blog settings and require comments to require approval before they are published – but this would also be time-consuming for me.

Or comments could be restricted to registered users – but this would add a barrier to those who wished to comment, especially those who aren’t regular visits to the blog.

I could also disable comments on posts after a certain period of time, which should reduce the amount of spam comment – but just because a post was made some time ago doesn’t mean that comments would not be useful.

I’m happy with the policy  of allowing comments , complemented by use of Akismet to automatically capture spam (although, I should add, sometimes Akismet traps legitimate comments).  But if you’re setting up a blog and are thinking about your policy on comments you’ll need to bear in mind the need to manage spam comments. And remember that Akismet is licensed software – although Akismet state that “We love non-profits. We have half-off and free pricing for registered non-profits, please see the link above.”.