Hannah Whaley . com

This week the Library of Congress announced, via a tweet, that they have been given the full back catalogue of tweets from Twitter to archive. This is kinda huge, and I don’t just mean in terms of storage space.

For the Library of Congress, they are confirming loudly their continued commitment to preserving and researching what matters to their nation, and with it the absolute requirement there is for them to do so. This furthers the important work they have already done in digital file standards and the semantic web, and shows an understanding and sensitivity towards the way history is now being written, and by whom. For some time now we have spoken of the changes in the news and publishing industries, and the role the average person can now play in communicating news. With this announcement, there is a sense of validation for what was already a widely accepted change in communications medium.

For Twitter, they have become the social network of history - it is the information passed through the channel they created that is being stored for all of time. One of the underlying concepts that has led Twitter to this has been their ideal of openness. Facebook, MySpace and even Friends Re-united before them kept everything locked down and internal - holding the data their users created close to them, in case it represented any possibility for further revenue. When you post on Twitter, the information you create is publicly available - therefore it can justifiably be viewed as such, archived and made available to researchers.

Twitter has therefore come to represent the thoughts of the population at any given snapshot in time, including historical events like the Obama election, topical events such as Michael Jackson’s death and real-time news like the Hudson Bay plane crash. While admittedly it is an unfortunate aside that many of the populations thoughts continue to be drivel, contained within them are the views of the masses on key events, and the idea that these remain open and accessible for researchers is very significant. A colleague rightly commented today that much content of newspapers is also drivel, but as with Twitter, the key news is still documented, discussed and evaluated within. How heartbreakingly (in fact, chillingly) different the communications surrounding 9/11 would be to look back on had twitter been used then as it is now.

We can therefore hail this as an important step for both research and open access. We can expect university researchers to draw immediate and fascinating data from the archives that attracts public interest and engagement. As many academic papers, conferences, and concepts are discussed online and tweeted, we may even find new ways to collate the information surrounding ‘published research’. This creates an odd irony - a company’s committment to openness may have made it easier to access what people think about a piece of research than it is to access the actual published document.

The 33rd Annual UKSG Conference was in Edinburgh this week, with a varied programme and over 850 attendees. A number of themes started to recur through the sessions and discussions, as summarised:

- Big deal bubble must burst, as it is unsustainable for many institutions

- We must move further towards open access, but it is not yet clear how

- Journal impact factor isn’t good enough anymore, we need to review the commentary and produce new ranking factors

- Linked information is nearly here, allowing informal and pre-publish conversations to be viewed and measured in a structured way on the web

- The age of the article is here, meaning metrics, usage and discoverability will increasingly be at article level rather than the ‘journal container’

- Just-in-time must replace just-in-case, as no one can maintain a full array of items that may only occasionally be required

The discussion around these issues is healthy, as is the growing volume with which librarians and researchers are willing to speak them out loud.  However these key themes are notable for representing problems, not solutions. It is clear that licensing models, researcher metrics, electronic and open access still have some way to evolve to meet the growing needs and expectations of the community.

Although growing steadily in popularity and function,  eBooks and eReaders have not yet reached critical mass. The platforms that we use to view them on have been evolving, and we now stand at a crossroads with 5 different directions of travel to choose from. Which will lead to the mainstream adoption of ebooks?

1. Amazon Kindle - sales of the Kindle have been impressive in the US (although unconfirmed), and it can now be ordered from the UK. It is also the most wished for item on Amazon. The Kindle 2 showed genuine progression in terms of functionality and it remains the main contender to become the iPod of the eBook world. With a catchier name than others (e.g. The Sony eBook Reader) and respected internet book giants Amazon as creators and sellers then it stands a good chance.

2. New Kids on the Block - some companies have come late to the game, allowing them to jump a step. Barns & Noble qualify with their new touchscreen Nook reader (although they are already getting sued) but a better example is CoolerBooks. Smaller companies retain the ability to be more agile in design and development will lead to better innovations, and therefore a path more likely to be travelled by the masses.

3. Mobile - why carry an ebook reader when you already have an iPhone at hand? The use of iPhone as an ebook platform has been increasing in two ways. One is through apps such as Stanza that effectively turn your iphone int a reader, letting you browse, download and read ebooks from a selection of over 100,000. The other is the Jamie Oliver route, where specific books are sold as iPhone apps in their own right, with additional video and voice content. Worth noting that Amazon have also released an app to read their proprietary book format on the iphone. Battery life and screen size remain reasons why this is unlikely to be adopted by the masses as a platform of choice.

4. Anywhere as a Platform - Google announced at the Frankfurt Book Fair this year that their ‘Google Editions’ ebook store will be launched early 2010 and will sell ebooks with no digital rights management attached. This means that ebooks become platform independent - you can read them on your PC, phone, Kindle or any reader. When Google step into any market it is significant, and these seems a well timed piece of the jigsaw puzzle that has taking shape for years with Google and their interest in books. Not surprisingly, a month or so later Amazon have announced a Windows application to allow you to read their ebooks on any PC (really covering all the bases now).

5. Not yet concieved - there is a good chance that the ebook platform of the future is still an unknown entity, an idea forming in the back of someone’s mind right now. The most obvious suspects are the unconfirmed (but widely known about) apple tablet or the Harry Potter style newspaper. The Apple tablet has the chance to combine the size and battery life of ereaders, with the flexibility of the various apps available, and the general functionality that Netbooks offer in internet, email and applications. Sounds good…

So which direction? I firmly believe that current ereaders are transitional technology - they exist to help move the mindset onto the concept of books being an electronic entity. This is why they are shaped like a book, come in covers that you can open and hold like a book, and some even have the graphic effects of page turning. Remember that the first MP3 players were the size and shape of walkmans - they could have been hexagonal but this wouldn’t have helped people make the jump! So that said, it seems hard to imagine that readers in their current format will still be here in 10 years - at some point people will find it needless to carry multiple pieces of technology that should be able to do the same thing. iPhones and the like are also not designed for purpose - too small and poor battery. They help sell the concept, but aren’t really workable.

So the answer has to be a combination of the final two - we’ll expect to read ebooks on whatever device we choose - and we expect the devices available to mature beyond eReaders and Netbooks. Agree?

There is an exciting new post available within my division of the Library and Learning Centre at the University of Dundee. From the advert:

“A range of enterprising academic software systems are in use at Dundee, and the Systems Developer will be part of a proactive team to further integrate and enhance these systems - ensuring they meet student and staff expectations. The team has an established reputation at an international level and is committed to building on existing work to remain an exemplar institution in this field.

The LLC is seeking to appoint a highly-skilled individual who can demonstrate aptitude in software design, web application programming, scripting, and data reporting. These skills will be used to design and develop add-ons, integrations, new functionality and automations, and contribute to upgrades, testing and issue resolution across all systems.”

I would encourage anybody interested to get in touch or send in an application - this one is a great opportunity for somebody.

Full details and further particulars.