Have you wanted the chance to learn more about Web 2.0 technologies such as wikis, blogs, social bookmarking, podcasting, and video sharing?   The MCR will be offering a 10-week online class using a self-discovery format called Learning 2.0.  MCR’s implementation of the Learning 2.0 program is based on the popular Learning 2.0  “23 Things” class originally created by Helene Blowers at the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenberg County and recently adapted for health sciences libraries by Becker Library at Washington University.   Our implementation has reduced “23 Things” to “13 Things,” but we think you will still find the class interesting and enjoyable!
 
The class is offered in an asynchronous format, so you can participate at any time that works for you.  We anticipate the class work will take (on average) 2 hours of your time per week.  We will also be offering optional synchronous sessions using Adobe Connect (dates to be announced) related to the current “13 Things” topic.
 
The class will be held from October 13, 2008 through December 19, 2008.
 
As a further incentive, the first 30 MCR members who sign up will, upon completion of the class, receive a USB MP3 player.  Others may sign up but we are only able to MP3 player to the first 30 MCR registrants who also complete the class.  So register now!
 
To learn more about the topics that will be covered the class, visit the class blog at:
http://nnlm-l2.blogspot.com/
 
To sign up, please e-mail Sharon Dennis at sdennis@lib.med.utah.edu    The first 30 will be determined by the date and time stamp on your e-mail.

We touched upon Mashups and API in Week 8 of the Web 2.0 101 CE.

But, as anyone who uses instant messaging knows, not all of your IM contacts are friends. Many are acquaintances or people you barely know and with whom you may not want to share a reading list.

This is an interesting dilemma for developers of social networking products.  I’m sure that Google is only trying to open the system up to allow for more interaction between users.  Yet at the same time users are saying,  “Whoa, not so fast, I want to choose my interactions”.   In the grand scheme of things this doesn’t represent a huge problem in privacy and in fact Google has posted directions to limit the user one shares with.  However libraries should watch these issues closely.  As OPACs, citation management software, and other services open up for library users we will all be faced with similar concerns over privacy.

The lesson here, open is good, but only as far as the user wants it to be.

Bart

From what we know so far, Knol is a wiki-like platform. Authors can create topics, and there are tools to interlink articles and content, but as Manber says, an article, or “knol,” is “just a Web page.” Where it differs from a wiki is its focus on the author. All knols will highlight who wrote them.
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9834175-7.html?tag=nefd.only

Interesting concept here with more focus on the author there is less ‘openness’.  Is Google challenging wikipedia or the wiki as a publishing environment?

Bart

http://www.oclc.org/reports/sharing/

“Health care startups are modeling themselves after YouTube and social networking sites such as MySpace in an effort to connect patients with each other and help them navigate overwhelming amounts of medical information available online.”

Several new resources are highlighted, including ICYou: “the YouTube of health care” where users can upload their own health-related videos; Daily Strength: anonymous, free online support groups for a variety of health issues & life challenges; and RateMDs.com, which allows patients to rate and read about their doctors and dentists.

While it’s great to see health startups adopt 2.0 technologies to more effectively connect patients with consumer health information and health providers, it will be interesting to see which sites will have staying power in the recently emergent field of “health 2.0” and who’s just in it for the money.

Then there’s the question of user-generated content in health care. While a mashup can show you who’s sick in your town, it’s only as good as the amount of information entered. Do we as health information professionals really want to point users to a wiki capturing the knowledge of, say, 300 epileptics, rather than medical experts? A recent article from the Economist.com explores that very question, pointing out a 2004 study from the British Medical Journal , where a panel of neurology specialists judged that only 6% of information posted in an epilepsy-support group was factually wrong. Interestingly enough, the very website under which this research occurred is no longer operational, and now leads to bunk searches from such nefarious dotcom sources as bizrate and slimstore.

And then there’s privacy issues. It’s great to build online communities of like minded individuals, but how much information can you share with an online community before someone’s HIPAA rights are violated? This is certainly an area of concern for medical professionals.

Content, privacy, staying power and community development. All issues ‘Health 2.0′ will have to address in order to, as the health 2.0 wiki puts it, “fundamentally redefine the healthcare industry along other “2.0″ lines”. I think certain trends in Web 2.0 work for consumer health. Certainly online communities are perfect for patients who may not be able to leave the house, or want to know a physicians bedside manner before making an appointment, and many authoritative resources have embraced technology such as podcasts, blogs and streaming video to serve up information. As for the user driven content in health care? Until Medlineplus rolls out a wiki, I’m staying wary.

You can now easily post articles to sites including Cite-U-Like, Connotea and Facebook, using links conveniently placed at the foot of the new navigation box.

But before you yawn at yet another example of the inescapability of trendy social networking tools, let’s break down how this can benefit you and your library constituents.

Citeulike, Connotea, and del.icio.us are all what I consider ’social bookmarking’ sites: sites that offer users an online location to share, store, discover and organize urls. This is good because they are all a) free & b) accessible from [mostly] anywhere. Sociality aside, you don’t have to build networks or request friends to optimize these tools…anyone who needs a portable space to store links will find these useful.

So how can social bookmarking work for you and your library users? Once you find something of interest, you can create a tag for it in your social bookmarking tool for other users to find. In fact, with a little coding you can even post your link roll on your library website.

Posting to del.icio.us from BMC is literally one-click away if you’re already a del.icio.us user and logged in. It stands to be noted that all of the tools listed above offer simple plug-ins for your browser which makes updating your bookmarks with new resources super-easy.

Digg describes itself as “democratizing digital media”. To me it’s a fusion of a bookmarking tool, discussion board, and the world’s most awesome RSS feed. The way digg works: users submit and classify content, whether it’s news, video, podcasts. Other users rate or “digg” the links, and comment on them. The most recent items are displayed on the main page for other users to sort, read, rate or comment upon. I use digg to keep tabs on rumors and industry buzz. It’s great for staying current on news, but you may have to go through 15 articles about low carb diet fads to find one scientific paper on nutrition.

That is why integrating social bookmarking tools into BMC is pretty cool - if you want people to know that skipping meals makes teens fat, you can submit it to digg & start a discussion. The ’social’ side of digg allows users to build networks and commentary. Imagine a network of users with similar research interests having a digg discussion on a peer reviewed article. The potential for collaboration is there.

Note: the process to post from BMC to digg was really easy. However you can only classify by tags that digg provides, which may irk some people.

Then there’s “the Facebook.” Bane of the IT department, college yearbook of the future, call it what you will, this social networking tool is going to be categorized with other 2.0 tools until marketing gets the memo that some of these things are not like the others. Realistically, I don’t see users fervently posting BMC articles as comments on their friend’s profiles (Brah -check out the c. elegans on this one! etc), but then again, this is an easy way to announce if you are published to a network of friends or colleagues, or if you want to start a discussion.

Note: you can send articles to Facebook as either a post on your profile or as a message to a friend. I’m unsure whether articles can be sent as a message to a Facebook group, which would be probably the most useful application.

It’s time for us to utilize the collaborative nature of social networking tools to initiate dialogs about topics other than Britney Spears. Incorporating these tools into ’serious’ resources like BMC is a good step. Maybe bandwagon 2.0 isn’t so bad after all.