Web 2.0 for Archivists

MARAC CHAUTAUQUAMay 1, 2008

Arian D. RavanbakhshKate Theimer

Workshop Overview

• Three Hour Tour (9:00 am - 12:00 pm) with one intermission (about 10:30)

• Disclaimer: Opinions expressed by Arian are his, not NARA’s.

• Topics on the table:

• Web 1.0 - History and Characteristics

• “Web 2.0” – Definition and Characteristics

• Overview of Specific Web 2.0 Sites/Tools

• What they are, how to use them, how archives are using them

• Other things to consider – copyright, sites to watch, final thoughts

3

Historical Development of Web

• 1836 Telegraph

• 1876 Telephone

• 1945 “As We Think”

• 1957 Advanced Research Projects Agency

• 1966 1st ARPANET plan

• 1969 the first ARPANET node at UCLA followed at a months interval with the 2nd, 3rd and 4th at Stanford, UC Santa Barbara and U of Utah

• 1980 Tim Burners Lee writes “Enquire” at CERN

• 1986 5000 Internet hosts

• 1990 web is born at CERN

• 1991 100/day 1992 1000/day 1993 10,000/day

• 1993 Mosaic 1994 Netscape founded 1995 First Microsoft Browser

• 1994 World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

• 1995 .com sites exceed .edu

• 2000 NASDAQ peaks (around 5100), .com bubble

Characteristics of Web 1.0

• Roughly, circa 1994-2004

• Websites largely one-way, published content

• Controlled, static information

• Technical point: Proprietary HTML tags like <blink> <marquee>

• Bandwidth limitations on users (most everyone on dial-up connections)

Dr. Michael Wesch, Kansas State Universityhttp://www.youtube.com/user/mwesch

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What is meant by “Web 2.0”?

• Term commonly agreed to have been coined by Tim O’Reilly in conjunction with O'Reilly Media Web 2.0 conference in 2004.

• Wikipedia definition: “A trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to facilitate creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users. These concepts have led to the development and evolution of web-based communities and hosted services, such as social-networking sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies.”

• Characteristics:

• Network as platform – “cloud computing”

• Openness – open architecture, open standards, open source, open content

• Sharing – people and organizations sharing content, users sharing opinions, tags, rankings,

• Explosion of ways to connect – people connecting through social networks, communities around blogs, wikis, Flickr groups; and people connecting information sources through tags, RSS feeds, mash-ups . . .

Overview of most common Web. 2.0 tools/sites

• RSS – makes it all possible

• Blogs & microblogs (such as Twitter)

• Podcasts (video and audio)

• Image sharing sites (such as Flickr)

• Video sharing sites (such as YouTube)

• Wikis

• Tagging and social bookmarking

• Social Networking sites (such as Facebook and LinkedIn)

• Second Life

RSS = Really Simple Syndication

• Web format used to publish frequently updated content

• Specified through XML formats

• RSS documents can contain either partial or complete content

• Contain wide variety of formats: text, photos, audio, video

• Aggregators collect RSS feeds

• Some client based, some web based

• Made possible a revolution – content now “pushed” out by providers, not “pulled” out individually by users

Content Distributed via RSS

• Blog

• Audio/Video (Podcast)

• Microblog

What is a blog?

Creating and maintaining a blog

• Technically, easy to start via Blogger or downloading Wordpress software.

• Before you begin, define what the blog is for.

• Identify how often you’d like to post and who will be responsible for writing posts. Writing posts takes time—make sure this is understood.

• Will you accept comments? Who will monitor them? Who will respond?

• Provide links back to your main site. Provide a contact email on the blog.

Examples of archives blogs

• General repository:

• Historical Notes from OHSU (http://ohsu-hca.blogspot.com/)

• Mudd Manuscript Library Blog (http://blogs.princeton.edu/mudd/)

• Alone In the Archives (http://lcb48.wordpress.com/)

• Processing blogs:

• Processing the Chew Family Papers (http://chewpapers.blogspot.com/)

• A View to Hugh (http://www.lib.unc.edu/blogs/morton/)

• Event-based

• Abner Jackson Journal 1858-1867 (http://abnerjackson.wordpress.com/)

• WW1: Experiences of an English Soldier (http://wwar1.blogspot.com/)

• Other resources

• Archival Blogs list (a wiki) (http://archivalblogs.wikispaces.com/archivalbloglist)

• ArchivesNext listing (http://www.archivesnext.com/?page_id=62)

• Archives Blogs aggregator (http://archivesblogs.com/)

Web-based RSS aggregator - ArchivesBlogs

Arian’s Google reader

Microblog - Twitter

Podcast (Audio or Video)

• Podcast - Audio Blog

• Vblog - Video Blog

Creating and maintaining podcasts

• You create digital audio or video files, put them on a server and make them available to the public

• Consider what kind of files you want to share (digitized collections or recordings of your public programs, for example). Do you want to have an ongoing series or just share occasional files?

• Consider how widely you want to promote your podcasts (iTunes, Podcast Alley, other directories)

• Provide resources on your website, way for users to contact you, send in comments.

Examples of archives podcasts

• Digitized historical content

• Thomas Edison’s Attic (http://wfmu.org/playlists/TE)

• Presidential Libraries podcasts (http://www.archives.gov/presidential-libraries/research/podcasts.html)

• StoryCorps (oral histories) (http://www.storycorps.net/listen/)

• Historical collections based podcasts

• Guided By History podcasts (http://blog.wellsfargo.com/GuidedByHistory/Podcasts/)

• National Archives of Australia (http://www.naa.gov.au/podcasts/audiocast.xml)

• Kansas Memory Podcast (http://www.kshs.org/audiotours/kansasmemory/kmpodcast.htm)

• National Archives (UK) podcast series (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/rss/podcasts.xml)

• (iTunes only) Tampa Library, Florida, Special Collections (http://itunes.usf.edu/)

Flickr - Photo Sharing

Using Flickr

• Free account: you can upload 100MB worth of photos each calendar month. This is a bandwidth limit, and not an amount of space that you have on Flickr servers. Some other limitations, but fine for beginning.

• Pro account - $25 per year. Unlimited uploads (practically), and other expanded features.

• Tags, link to maps, collections & sets, user groups

• Make sure you include links and contact information

• Check your comments

Archives on Flickr

• “The Commons” (primarily LOC) (http://flickr.com/commons)

• “The key goals of The Commons are to firstly give you a taste of the hidden treasures in the world's public photography archives, and secondly to show how your input and knowledge can help make these collections even richer.”

• Groups: ArchivesOnFlickr, Archives & archivists on Flickr, etc.

• Long listing on ArchivesNext of archives (http://www.archivesnext.com/?page_id=62)

YouTube - Video Sharing

Using YouTube

• Create digital video files and post them to the YouTube site.

• Consider what kind of files you want to share (digitized collections or recordings of your public programs, for example)

• You can do a single video or a series (or a “channel”)

• Provide resources on your website, way for users to contact you, send in comments.

• One advantage—you can post a video on YouTube and then link to it from your blog without having to host the video on your own server. (And others can link to it as well.)

Archives on YouTube

• Posting “about us” videos

• New South Wales State Records

• Purdue University Archives

• National Archives of Australia (very short) • Posting videos of talks or events

• Auburn University• Posting digitized video content

• National Library of Scotland (Scottish Screen Archives)• Poetry Center Reading Series, Stony Brook Archives

• Creating topical videos• George Eastman House • Hofstra University (Thomas Coffin collection) • Northwestern University – History of the Wildcats

• Creating “what is an archivist” videos • Lots of these, actually

Social Content: Wikis - Wikipedia

Creating and maintaining a wiki

• Software to install on your own server is free (MediaWiki) or you can have a free wiki on a commercial site (PB wiki, WetPaint, etc.)

• Some rudimentary knowledge of coding is useful, but not mandatory

• If the wiki is open it will require monitoring to prevent spammers or other malicious types.

Examples of how archives can use wikis

• “Your Archives” wiki at National Archives (UK) (http://yourarchives.nationalarchives.gov.uk/index.php?title=Home_page)

• College of William & Mary (http://scrc.swem.wm.edu/wiki/index.php/Special_Collections_Research_Center)

• John A. MacDonald portal (http://www.canadachannel.ca/pm/index.php/Welcome_to_the_John_A._Macdonald_Portal)

• Refuge Archives at ELU (http://refugeearchives.wetpaint.com)

• Example from a library: Biz Wiki (http://www.library.ohiou.edu/subjects/bizwiki/index.php/Main_Page)

Social Networking: Facebook/LinkedIn

Getting started on Facebook

• Create an account (personal or organizational). You can’t access Facebook unless you have an account.

• Fill out your profile

• If it’s a personal account, get yourself some friends!

• It’s easy to waste a lot of time on Facebook, but it’s not necessary.

• If it’s an organizational account, take a look at some other organizational pages to get ideas for the things you can do. (Ohio and UK are good ones).

Archives & Archivists on Facebook

• Groups for archivists on Facebook (Archivists on Facebook, Archivists Without a Cause, The Lone Arrangers, etc.)

• Groups for archival organizations (MARAC, MAC) (Note the “SAA” group is not sponsored by SAA.)

• Organizations have Facebook pages, and people can become “fans” (National Archives-UK, Ohio Historical Society, University of Wisconsin -- Eau Claire Special Collections & Archives, etc.)

Social Bookmarking: del.icio.us

Second Life

Copyright 2.0

Sites to Watch, Things to Do

• ADR’s sites to watch:

• General Technology News: ArsTechnica.com

• Web 2.0 Applications: Webware.com

• News about new toys: Engadget.com

• Kate’s things to do:

• Set up a GoogleReader or Bloglines account and subscribe to a bunch of archives and library blogs. For libraries, I like LibrarianInBlack, Free Range Librarian, Library Stuff, and librarian.net.

• Play with some of this stuff. Set up a blog or wiki. Subscribe to some podcasts. Join Facebook and look around.

Final Thoughts/Questions/Discussion

• It’s ok for things not to be perfect. None of this is ever finished.

• Don’t fear failure. Everyone is trying things out. That’s what 2.0 is.

• This stuff is actually fun. That doesn’t mean it’s not work. But it is fun.

• You may get unexpected results.

• Contact Kate if you want more information.