A presentation given at the UKSG 2011 conference in Harrogate, UK during April 2011.

1. Image: Jenser (Clasix-Design) @ Flickr Open, social and linked A ménage à trois of content exploitation Andy Powell, Eduserv www.eduserv.org.uk/research twitter.com/andypowe11 UKSG, Harrogate April 2011

2. Overview / will argue that we have tended to underplay the importance of social networks in our provision of library and academic publishing services / and, in fact, in the development of digital library services more generally / and that emphasis on providing open and linked content provides platform for social activity Image: Niecieden@ Flickr

3. Attitude / our behaviour is being changed / the web is now a social construct / research and learning are social activities / ditto cultural heritage Image: still from The Machine is Us/ing Us by Michael Wesch

4. residents vs. visitors Image: bartmaguire@ Flickr / a visitor is “an individual who uses the web as a tool in an organised manner whenever the need arises” / a resident is “an individual who lives a percentage of their life online” David White, University of Oxford – TALL Blog / note: attitude rather than capability / in digital libraries, we have tended to focus on visitors

5. channels vs. platforms Image: akhr1961 @ Flickr / content should be ‘of’ the web rather than ‘on’the web / huh? what does that mean? / again, it’s about attitude / an expectation of re-use / think platform rather than channel

6. In digital libraries… / in digital libraries we have a long (and pre-digital) heritage / we tend to focus on content and descriptions of content / and moving collections of those descriptions from providers to consumers / such that they can be searched and browsed or otherwise displayed to individuals Image: spike55151 @ Flickr

7. Standards Image: BEUTELTIERE @ Flickr / we’re quite good at standards… / particularly those that focus on metadata (MARC, MODS, DC, ORE, etc.) / and identifiers for the content / and protocols (OAI-PMH, Z39.50, SRW, etc.) / and OpenURL, …

8. Access control / because some (most?) content has not been freely available we also focus on access control / standards like SAML / software like Shibboleth or OpenAthens Image: spodzone@ Flickr

9. People and identity Image: Jenser (Clasix-Design) @ Flickr / commonly still a focus on one-way flow of information / increasing interest in relationships between stuff and people / but usually with a content-centric view / still little real interest in relationships between people / which means that ‘identity’ issues normally focus on “that is you, that is what you are allowed to do” / whereas on the social web, the emphasis is different “this is me, this is what I’ve done”

10. Openness aside (1) / being open is all about enabling re-use / cultural conditions for openness don’t emerge overnight / as we are finding with learning objects, research papers and probably data Image: dullhunk@ Flickr

11. Openness aside (1) Image: tk-link @ Flickr / UKRDS survey of staff representing 700 researchers (2009)... / 43% expressed need to see other’s research data / most share data in some form (informally with peers) / but only 12% share via existing formal data centres

12. Openness aside (2) / need to distinguish ‘open’ from ‘free’ / aspects of Amazon service are ‘open’ but content paid-for / contrast with current difficulty determining which e-books are made available by which publishers http://ebookfinder.labs.eduserv.org.uk

13. The social web / typical characteristics of social websites / concentration and diffusion Lorcan Dempsey, OCLC Lorcan Dempsey’s Blog / exposure at the item level / focus on social interaction - both within the network and across other networks

14. Contrast with repositories / contrast with repository activity / mis-match between repository architecture and real-world social networks / emphasis on ‘shelving’ content rather than social behaviour / uncompelling value offer to end-users / result… the need for mandates to fill what would otherwise remain empty Image: timtom.ch @ Flickr

15. Linked Data / Linked Data… use URIs as names for things. use HTTP URIs, so that people can look up those names when someone looks up a URI, provide useful information, using the standards (RDF, SPARQL) include links to other URIs, so that they can discover more things / point 2 brings greatest value / modelling issues make realisation of the promise some way off Image: Zach Klein @ Flickr

16. Facebook ‘like’ button / Facebook ‘like’ button provides interesting case in point / underpinned by snippet of Linked Data (using the Open Graph Protocol) / but emphasis is on building social capital rather than the technology / arguably, value comes more from use of ‘http’ URI than from use of RDF

17. Conclusions Conclusions / if the web teaches us one thing, it is the power of the http URI and links based on it / openness and linkedness provide a platform for social interaction / but are not sufficient on their own / increasingly need to understand the social activity of our users, particularly resident behaviours, and think platform rather than channel