Back in time for Christmas! Europeana is working again (when it launched in November the site crashed due to demand).
Europeana showcases over "two million books, maps, recordings, photographs, archive documents, paintings and films."
David over at the Digital Archive has a new venture called Archives Open which is a
"new community-powered blog that focuses on archives, access, community and the Web... a platform to discuss Web 2.0 technologies and Web 2.0 ethics and values "
He has a nice post about the new blog and the reasons behind it here. I think it's a really good idea and a new way of using a blog to collect information from archivists and users about the Web 2.0 projects that are happening out there. It looks like it will build up into a handy resource and source of inspiration.
It's open for business now so get over there and check it out.
I read today that Obama is using youtube for his weekly addresses as president-elect and it made me wonder what the impact this high level endorsement of technology might have on its up-take by the average archive or archivist. (Incidently, the wonder of the Internet allows us to listen to Roosevelt's fireside chats and compare the two formats for ourselves.)
I did wonder whether this was going to be an area where the UK was slightly behind but it turns out the Prime Minister already has a youtube channel, with 500+ videos . There is also a UK parliament pilot channel on youtube. Who'd have thought it?
I wonder whether the use of these kinds of technology by government bodies will have an impact and make those organisations that have been more conservative and hesitant in their approach to Web 2.0 look again at them? Does it legitimise Web 2.0 activity?
The BBC Archive has put up some interesting stuff from WWII about Russian relations. It ties in with the BBC series World War II: Behind Closed Doors and features this series of memos on the subject of the appropriateness of jokes about Russia once they joined the conflict.
Technorati published it's State of the Blogosphere report recently. This annual report from Technorati looks at the statistics and trends in the blogging world (blogosphere). Some of the stats seem crazy, 133 million blogs started since 2002, 900,000 posts a day and 94.1 million blog readers in America alone in 2007. For information about the UK blogosphere see this report from comScore.
One item in the Technorati report which caught my eye was a quote from Shel Israel about the blogosphere and what it now means:
Until recently, 'the Blogosphere' referred to a small cluster of geeks circled around a single tool. Now it refers to hundreds of millions of people using a vast warehouse of tools that allow people to behave increasingly online like they do in real life. We have entered the Age of Normalization in the Blogosphere.
The age of normalization - have we really reached the stage where blogs are a normal and routine communication channel? I don't know that we have, I'm the only person among my group of friends who reads blogs on a daily basis. Its not a very scientific argument I know but they are all daily users of the Internet, into Facebook etc but none of them are interested in blogs. I doubt that on a day to day basis reading blogs is a routine activity for the majority of people. However, what is clear from the figures involved is that blogs have a large, growing audience (41% of UK Internet audience) for whom blogs are a regular read. So, if you are in the business of communicating with people then blogs should be an important tool for you.
The useful thing about report like the Technorati one is that it helps to gain an idea of where blogging sits in the world of communications and whether its worth considering. As blogs do become normal you have to wonder whether it will seem particularly innovative for your archive to have one as well? Or if you don't have one will it be a disadvantage similar to that which not having a website was a couple of years ago? I don't think having or not having a blog will make or break the reputation of an archive but I think not having one is an opportunity missed to share your collections, update interested readers or bring to life records.
I've briefly touched on the issue of how much time it takes to do "web 2.0" before. Back then I linked to a post from the Museum 2.0 blog that I had found very useful. I started to think about this issue of time and what busy archivists can do again as I've been preparing an article for Arc on the subject of Web 2.0 and Archivists.
Taking inspiration from some nice diagrams here, I put together this image to accompany my article and thought I'd share my hard work cutting and pasting logos here on the blog. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination but I think it breaks up Web 2.0 activities nicely and shows how even with very little time its possible to dip your toe in the Web 2.0 world.
Breaking up "Web 2.0" into 3 main stages makes it less daunting as an activity. Checking out Wikipedia for references to your archive is easier and less scary than creating content and 'putting yourself out there'.
Before you start participating, creating content or building communities, my top tip would be investigate. Find out what level of web presence your organisation or collections have. Get a sense for what is out there and what works. Then participate - comment, amend, tag anything you find with your expert knowledge about the collection and link back to your own website (or blog, flickr pages etc if you you've also been busy creating.)
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