Using Web 2.0 for health libraries – an update

Paula Younger12 June 2013

A rose by any other name..

The Participatory Web The Social Web Web 3.0 (well, almost) Web 3D? (Mainly engineering focused at

present) Printing slow & clunky now – likely to revolutionise many aspects of our lives

The Semantic Web –way beyond hyperlinks: http://www.w3.org/standards/semanticweb/

Progress since 2010...

Much more participatory Twitter has really taken off Facebook & Amazon are now terrifyingly

targeted (Minority Report, anyone?!) The rise and rise of the iPad, iPhone and Ice

Cream Sandwiches

Convergence

Smartphones and other tablet devices much more widespread than they were

Texting and mobile phone technology now embedded in daily life

Even the BNF has its own mobile app now and there are many others

“Always on” – users need to learn to be more selective. Which is where libraries and information management units come in.

The Lego approach

Just because you bought the box that makes the Egyptian Temple with the mummies doesn’t mean you can’t make other things out of it too....– (After a concept from Paul Miller,

Technology Evangelist, http://www.connex-network.org/?p=102)

Synergy - the sum is greater than the total of the parts

What’s everybody else doing?

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/administration/library/newssummary/news_9-5-2013-9-52-15

http://www.mlanet.org/resources/web20_resources.html

Our particular problem: Web 2.0 for Current Awareness

How it began – current awareness issue in the south west. Not enough library staff/time – lots of users interested in current awareness

Looked at lots of other examples, e.g. Netvibes (Shrewsbury and other Trusts)

Set up task and finish group Looked into possibility of Yahoo Pipes

Getting off the ground

Traditional method, trawling through sources & abstracting is very time consuming

Increasing pressure on staffing/budgets– Why not use technology?– Web 2.0 technologies? – RSS feeds– Looked at several options including Netvibes

Piping Hot

Yahoo Pipes – what it is Quick demonstration of how we’re using it in

a subsection of the south west (Avon/Gloucestershire/Wiltshire)

The “Master Pipe” concept “Quick & dirty” approach – very collaborative Each library “owns” a particular subject area

Not reinventing the wheel Borrowing other people’s pipes..”cloning”

RSS Aggregators

Great. All aggregated. Now, what do we do for those who don’t/can’t have RSS readers?

Lots of RSS aggregators out there that will deliver content direct to a mailbox - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_feed_aggregators lists some

One colleague wanted daily, weekly or monthly updates rather than daily only

Enter......The Chimp!

MailChimp

Very customisable - you can include images, weblinks, Twitter links, Facebook links and much more

Free (within limits) – 12,000 messages per month to 2,000 subscribers

“Push” technology approach rather than “pull” – great for time-pressed medics and managers!

Tips, tricks and pitfalls

The importance of keywords/word stems cannot be over-emphasised – mental health posed a particular problem here e.g. “mentalization”

Keep an eagle eye on RSS feeds on journal pages/government website pages in particular – as they change frequently– http://downloadsquad.switched.com/2010/02/08/1

0-free-ways-to-keep-track-of-changes-to-any-website-without-rss/

Back to the Future

Although it’s possible, we haven’t yet managed to incorporate– Turning any page into an RSS feed– Finding anything that will work on RCN/Nursing

Standard journals!– We can use TicTocs and similar but it’s a little hit

and miss– It doesn’t appear to be possible currently to easily

incorporate feeds from e.g. CINAHL although Pubmed, for instance, works just fine

Particular NHS challenges

Low levels of ICT literacy, in general Lack of WiFi capability NHS IT departments HATE cloud computing They REALLY hate social media – yet NHS

Mail allows you to send text messages directly and some Trusts even send out their own Tweets

(They’d hate PortableApps even more – introduced to these at UWE Gadget Day)

How will it affect us library-type people?

As deliverers and facilitators of information, we’re going to have to get used to competing with users incapable of switching off their smartphones – multitasking comes of age

Much shorter attention spans – use of tools like Prezi may be more useful in future

“Bite size” chunks User expectations – everything constantly at

“beta” (Google Scholar, anyone?!)

Completely miscellaneous Web 2.0/3.0 developments

Haptic arms Pinterest; Storify IFTT (“If This, Then That”

– Find many more at: www.go2web20.net– Webtools4u2use.wikispaces.com– C4lpt.co.uk/top100tools

http://www.medicine20congress.com/ocs/index.php/med/med2013 - future conference

Questions and contact details

Paula Younger, North Somerset Healthcare Library Weston General Hospital, Weston-super-

Mare BS23 4TQ paula.younger@btinternet.com after 22 July

2013