Implementation of Library 2.0 Technologies in BBEC Library using Blogger

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1 Ms. Dhiru Barman Librarian, Bineswar Brahma Engineering College, Kokrajhar, Assam Mobile No , Id: Abstract: Web 2.0 technologies growing day to day quickly and become more useful in academic libraries. The concept of Library 2.0 is taken from Web 2.0 which provides us a different way of accessing the library. Library 2.0 is a concept taken from Web 2.0 with a vision of offering a different library service, geared towards the needs and expectations of today s library users. In this idea, the library 2.0 makes information available anywhere and at any time the user requires it. Library 2.0 make possible and encourages a culture of library user s representation upon the perspectives and contributions of academic librarian and their staff. Libraries are increasingly enhancing their website by introducing Library 2.0 features. Keywords: Blog, Library 2.0, RSS, Social Networking, Web Introduction: Library 2.0 is a concept taken from Web 2.0 with a vision of offering a different library service, geared towards the needs and expectations of today s library users. In this vision, the library makes information available wherever and whenever the user requires it, and seeks to ensure that barriers to use and reuse are removed. Library 2.0 facilitates and encourages a culture of participation, drawing upon the perspectives and contributions of library staff, technology partners and the wider community. Blogs, wikis and RSS are often held up as exemplary manifestations of Web 2.0. This paper is based on a Blog for Bineswar Brahma Engineering College Library, to harness the different facets of Web 2.0 and exemplify the impact of Web 2.0 technologies especially in the enhancement of usage of library resources and services. 2. Web 2.0 and Library 2.0: Stephen Abraham describes Web 2.0 as a conversation. Modern users look for this kind of warm experience with the web, something like an interactive dialogue. The outcome of this interactivity is the emergence of services like Instant Messaging, Steaming media, Blogs, news feeds, tagging etc. which are grouped together called as Web 2.0 services. The modern library concepts have also embraced these services and call them as Library 2.0 services. The concepts of Library 2.0, OPAC 2.0, and Librarian 2.0 are the offspring of Web 2.0 ideas. The idea of Web 2.0 can be summarized as the reciprocal link between the user and provider. The essence of Web Page1

2 2.0 lies in the genuine interactivity between the user and the content. Thus many services which underline the participation platform were derived and underline the concept of Web Tools of Library 2.0: Tools used for evolving Library 2.0 environment can broadly be grouped into five categories as described below (Arora, 2008): 3.1 Synchronous Communication Instant Messaging (IM): IM is a form of realtime communication between two or more people based on typed text, images etc. IM has become increasingly popular due to its quick response time, its ease of use, and possibility of multitasking. It is estimated that there are several millions of IM users, using for various purposes viz: simple requests and responses, scheduling face to face meetings, or just to check the availability of colleagues and friends. 3.2 Content Delivery RSS Feeds: RSS is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication and Rich Site Summary. RSS is an XML-based (extensible Markup Language) format for content distribution. It informs users of updates to blogs or websites, which are interested by the users. Many web browsers have built-in-feed readers or aggregators, and can easily add feeds to web page HTML Feeds: HTML feeds are basically RSS feeds converted into HTML codes so as to facilitate peer-to-peer interaction amongst researchers and sharing of RSS search results. The HTML codes can be placed onto the web sites and the resulting HTML feed can be customised to compliment the page. HTML feeds allows quicker access information to visiting users Podcasting: A podcast is a series of audio or video digital-media files which is distributed over the Internet by syndicated download, through Web feeds, to portable media players and personal computers. Though the same content may also be made available by direct download or streaming, a podcast is distinguished from other digital-media formats by its ability to be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded automatically when new content is added Vodcasting: The VOD in Vodcasting stands for video-on-demand. It is identical to podcasting. While podcasting is used for delivering audio files, vodcasting is used for delivering video content. Like podcast content, vodcasts content can be played either on a laptop or on personal media assistant (PMA). Page2

3 3.3 Collaborative Publishing Tools Blog: Blogs are considered as lightweight publishing tools. Blogs provide control to an individual or group of individuals for publishing contents or making commentary on it. Technologically, blogs are easier to use, platform-independent, and accessible online over the Internet. Broadly, blogs can be said to be online dairies, however, thousands of blogs are maintained by experts in different subject areas who are willing to share their knowledge, understanding and opinions with other people Wikis: Wiki is a piece of server software that allows users to freely create and edit Web page content using any Web browser. Wiki supports hyperlinks and has simple text syntax for creating new pages and cross links between internal pages on the fly. Wiki is unusual among group communication mechanisms where it allows the organization of contributions to be edited in addition to the content itself. 3.4 Collaborative Service Platforms Social Networking: Social network services are web-based interfaces that facilitate community of users to interact with each other deploying tools such as chat, messaging, , video, voice chat, file sharing, blogging, discussion groups, etc. MySpace, FaceBook, Del.icio.us, Frappr, and Flickr are some of the social networking services that are very popular Tagging: A tag is a keyword that is added to a digital object (e.g. a website, picture or video clip) to describe it, but not as part of a formal classification system. The concept of tagging has been widened far beyond website bookmarking, and services like Flickr (Photos), YouTube (video) and Audio (podcasts) allow a variety of digital artefacts to be socially tagged Social Bookmarking Services: Social bookmarking is a method of storing, organizing, searching and managing bookmarks of web sites using descriptive metadata. Libraries can make use of social bookmarking sites using RSS feeds for subject disciplines or in areas of specialization relevant to them. 3.5 Hybrid Applications, Programs and Programming Tools Mashups: A mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool. Content used in mashups is typically sourced from a third party via a public interface or API (web services). Other methods of sourcing content for mashups include Web feeds (e.g. RSS or Atom), and screen scraping. Mashup is a hybrid of blogs, wikis, streaming media, content aggregators, Page3

4 instant messaging, and social networks. Mashups are applications, where two or more technologies or services are merged into a completely new, novel service AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML): Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), or AJAX, is a group of interrelated web development techniques used for creating interactive web applications. The technology facilitates web pages to interact with users by exchanging small amounts of data with the server behind the scene so that entire web pages do not have to be reloaded each time there is a need to fetch data from the server. This is intended to increase the web page's interactivity speed, functionality and usability (Wikipedia, 2008) Application Programming Interface (API): An application programming interface (API) is a source code interface provided by an operating system, library or service to support requests made by computer programs. Language-dependent APIs are available only in a particular programming language. They utilize the syntax and elements of the programming language to make the API convenient to use in this particular context. 4. BBEC Library: The Bineswar Brahma Engineering College, Kokrajhar is the 3 rd Govt Engineering College in Assam ( The College has setup the Bineswar Brahma Engineering College (BBEC) Library as a backbone of academic and research activities of the College. BBEC Library has been catering to the information needs of the faculty members, students and staff since its inception. BBEC Library holds around volumes of books including reference and text books which cover the disciplines of Computer Science, Information Technology, Biotechnology, Mathematics, Physics, Materials Science, Humanities, Management and other areas related to Engineering, Science and Technology. The collection comprises of printed documents such as books, reports, journals and newspapers. The non-book collections include CDROM discs. 5. Implementation of Library 2.0 Technologies in BBEC Library: The BBEC Library has an interactive Web 2.0 enabled library blog where students can update themselves and also can interact with library staff for queries and suggestions facilitate quality services to its users. Blogs, RSS, Social Networking and other tools of Web 2.0 technologies have been used in BBEC Library blog. The main idea behind this blog is to create awareness, user education and personal interaction with users and also to develop the culture for creating and using the knowledge instead of collecting and storing. Page4

5 Fig.1 BBEC Library Blog The following procedures have been applied for designing the website: 5.1 Use of Blog: Google Blogger ( has been used for the designing the BBEC Library blog ( Gmail account is necessary for creating a blog. The steps for creating a blog are- Step1. Log into blogger account Create a Blog Enter title and address (URL) Continue Then, Blogger will create new blog and reserve spot on Blogspot. Fig.2 Creation of New blog Page5

6 Step 2. Creating new page: Dashboard New page Write Contents Publish page. Fig. 4 Creation of Page in a Blog Step 3. Publishing new post: Dashboard New post Write Contents Publish post. All the settings for blog are available in the blog dashboard, the main editing interface to blogger. Fig. 3 Blogger Dashboard Page6

7 5.2 Use of RSS: RSS feed and Subscription is added in BBEC Library blog to know how many people subscribe the blog and to make easier for the reader to subscribe. Feedburner is a free web service which enhances bloggers and podcasters ability to manage their RSS feeds and track usage of their subscribers Setting up for Feedburners feed: Step 1. Go to the Feed burner and sign into feedburner using Google account. Step 2. Add the blog URL to the Burn a feed Right this instant and click next. Step 3. Select the RSS 2.0 and then next. Step 4. On the stats configuration page: Select Clickthroughs and click next Adding feedburner feed to blog: This is used to add the RSS icon and easy subscribe option to the blog as explained below- Steps: Click on the Publicize Tab Chicklet Chooser in Feedburner account and copy the HTML code Paste it into gadget of the blog then save and close. Fig. 5 Selection of Checklet Chooser for RSS feed Page7

8 5.2.2 Adding a Feedburner Subscription: It is important to add an subscription option to the blog sidebar as some readers prefer to receive latest posts from blogs using subscription. Step 1. Click on the Publicize Tab Subscription Click Activate Copy the HTML Code Paste it in the same gadget of the blog used for RSS feed then Save and close. Now, readers simply enter their address and then click on Subscribe and feedburner s post to them, which has been posted in the blog. 5.3 Use of Social Networking: To make the blog stand good, more user friendly and in turn to produce a good number of web hits and incoming links within a very short period of its hosting to the web, it demands integrating the website with other gadgets of social networking Twitter integration: Twitter is a website, owned and operated by Twitter Inc., which offers a social networking and microblogging service, enabling its users to send and read messages called tweets. Tweets are text- based posts of upto 140 characters displayed on the user s profile page. Twitting in the realtime by using the Blogger- Step 1. Open a twitter account. Step 2. Log into feedburner. Step 3. Go to Publicize tab. Step 4. Go to Socialize Services. Step 5. Click on Add a Twitter Account button. Step 6. Login with username or with password, then click Allow button to authorize and add the Twitter account to which user would like to post items from the feed. Step 7. Now in feedburner account change the Formatting options and item selection setting if prefer. Step 8. Click on active or save button to start the auto tweet function. After linking feed and twitter, whenever posted something to blog, it will automatically post over Twitter account ( Page8

9 Fig. 6 Socialize feed via Twitter account Facebook Integration: First Log into Facebook account and search for Twitter app. By signing into Twitter account, and select the option Allow Twitter to Update your status on Facebook. Save the changes to complete the linking of the blogger. Twitter and Facebook have updates appear across the sites. The Facebook page for BBEC Library is 6. Future Plans of BBEC Library: 6.1 To generate scholarly communication instead of storing and retrieval. 6.2 To implement more Library 2.0 tools and techniques in the blog to facilitate quality services to its users. Page9

10 Conclusion: The purpose of the technologies described in this paper is the example of how library 2.0 can make library visible in web. Hoping that this model will be a tool for many libraries which want to embrace the technology in order to serve its users in a better way. Most of the tools and technologies which included in the blog are open source. Bibliography and References: 1. Arora, J. (2008). Library 2.0: Innovative Technologies for Building Libraries of Tomorrow. In R. Bharucha (Ed.), Current Trends in Libraries in the Digital Era (pp ). Ahmedabad: Ahmedabad Library Network. 2. Barman, D., & Kalita, R. J. (2010). Library 2.0: Moving Towards New Generation. In J. Arora (Ed.), PLANNER Ahmedabad: INFLIBNET. 3. Dey, N. C., & Sarkar, P. (2009). RSS Feeds and its Application in Library Services. 7th International CALIBER-2009 (pp ). Ahmedabad: INFLIBNET. 4. Hussain, A. (2015). Adoption of Web 2.0 by the Institutions of Higher Education in India. Pearl: A Journal of Library and Information Science, 9 (2), Kataria, S., & K., J. P. (2009). Applications of Web 2.0 in the Enhancement of Services and Resource in Academic Libraries : An JIIT University Noida, India. ICDL-2009, (pp ). 6. Lihitkar, S. R. (2014). Applications of Web 2.0 tools in IIT Libraries in India: a Study. Journal of Library & Information Science, 4 (1), Manus, B. M. (2009). The Implications of Web 2.0 for Academic Libraries. Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship, 10 (3). 8. Mazafari, N. (2015). A user profile- based friendship recommendation solution in social networks. Journal of Information Science, 41 (3), Seena, S. T. (2014). Impact of Web 2.0 Technology Applications in Kerala University Library: Library Professionals' Perspective. DJLIT: DESIDOC Journal of Library and Information Technology, 34 (5), Zanin-Yost, A. (2010). Library 2.0: Blogs, Wikis, and RSS to serve the Library. Library Philosophy and Practice. Page10