2009 Predictions

So, January - if any month was a goldmine for bloggers it's January. Firstly, it's just been Christmas so all those odd gadgets are ready and waiting for your community review and secondly it gives everyone an opportunity to try and guess what the New Year will bring.

And why not? Here's my top 10 trends for 2009:

1. Mobile Web - it's not just about the iPhone, 2009 will be the year that sorts the wheat from the chaff in terms of mobile websites and applications. Those who should be offering services to the small screens will be starting to panic by December if they don't have a top class interface. After all, mobile is the new black.

2. Always On -in many ways this is an extension of the Mobile Web but WiFi (free, no warranty and unsecured) will continue to expand and the gaps will be filled by 3G and other technologies. 

3. Location Sensitivity - Mozilla Geode, GPS in phones, and all kinds of geo-mashing means that by the end of 2009 we'll be starting to expect that web applications know where we are when we use them. This will lead to all kinds of cool Library applications.

4. Reality Will Be (even more) Augmented - the first three predictions will start to work together to provide more augmented experiences. Who hasn't seen someone walking down the street, with google maps on their iPhone? The next step will be continually updated information which can be used to 'enhance' your experience of the real world with all kinds of metadata - imagine google earth but in the real world.

5. The Google OS Comes of Age - more people will ditch e for g, google docs, gmail, calendar and other cloud apps will become far more prevalent and people's first reaction will be to go online. Windows 7 might even boot straight to IE...

6. IPv6 - There'll be an increasing push on moving to IPv6 in order to cater for all those cars, phones, watches and spoons which will need IP addresses.

7. Chrome will Catch Up with Firefox - Well, maybe not by the end of 2009 but Google will package Chrome in as many ways as possible and this will eat into the 'anything but IE' market. IE 8 will probably win some floating browsers back and will, of course, have the core 'bundled with Windows' market. It's not unthinkable that we'll enter into a second browser wars with Google and Microsoft head to head in 2010.

8. Fibre Becomes Political - Obama's already stated that building a new communications infrastructure is a key part of his technology agenda and Gordon Brown's jumped on the bandwagon. Whether this is modern day boondoggling or not we'll end up with a better spread of high bandwidth access in the end. 2009 will probably be more about preparing, posturing and fears of a new digital divide.

9. Twitter Jumps the Shark - Are there any celebs who aren't tweeting (or at least having their assistant tweet for them?). People will start to see that Twitter is mostly divided between 'broadcasting' A-listers and banal "@jon - had beans for tea" individuals - all the effective use in the middle will shift to business or social-network based presence services. 

10. Better Language Processing - Ok, maybe this won't come in 2009 but it's just on the horizon. It would be fantastic to think that the semantic web could be fueled by well formatted, and easily accessible, XML data but there's going to need to be something that bridges the gap and can identify and attribute triples from the language of text. We might see increasing use of simple approaches in 2009 (identifying phone numbers, places, postal codes, etc) at least.

Here's some other 2009 lists for those who are interested: Robin Hamman, Trendspotting, Tame the Web, Pew, Horizon Report - A & NZ and various LITA people.

Link Round Up

Yet more great stories you might have missed.

• It turns out that 73.4% of Wikipedia is written by 2% of the users and people are claiming that this undermines its authenticity - all the more reason to be an editor. In related news, did you know 90% of books are written by 1% of people who can read?
• If your OCD has reached new heights why not write an annual report about your life?
• LibraryThing sells it's soul signs up with the Cambridge Information Group and then coughs quietly hoping people will go back to thinking about OCLC.
• NetLibrary are offering Sony Reader compatible eBooks - which is great for me!
• Google have a cool new crowdsourcing service which allows you to apply user responses to improve your site. 
  
• Brian Kelly goes back to basics and defines "web site" (triggering off a terminology discussion in the comments).

• Oh yeah, and the rest of the UK started to take note of the OCLC situation once it made it into the broadsheets (just after they'd postponed and suggested a rethink). UPDATE: The Grauniad has issued some corrections on the original article).

What to do With Accessibility?

Anyone who hasn't been on Mars will know that the W3C has just released version 2.0 of their Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. In due course these will become a British Standard (BS 8878) (draft here - which apparently goes past it's sell by date on the 31st...).

One simple thing that's worth stating is that the speed of the web and the speed of any committee are so far apart we can all be pretty confident that the new guidelines will be out of date in some capacity as soon as they were confirmed. W3C have had a fair amount of trouble trying to strike the balance between practical and content-agnostic, I'll leave it to you to decide how well they did.

If you want a solid overview, there' a great video introduction by Paul Boag here. My suggestion is that you go watch that, or if you're brave/underworked go read the full spec here. It's ok, I'll wait...

Great, - who knew that WCAG is pronounced 'whuk-ag' eh! 

There's a few interesting points which have real relevance to anyone wanting to provide Web 2.0-y services - and a few questions that popped up in my mind.

Principles vs Practice

Here's an issue I have with accessibility guidelines: they start off with a straightforward and fair principle (such as "Everyone should have easy access to web resources") and then try and draw up rules or approaches which instruct you in how to meet that principle. The problem is that, in reality, the idea of 'universal access' is so wide that it's impossible to pin down - running the gamut from sensory disabilities (blindness, deafness) through to varying levels of literacy problems. 

At the end of this attempt to tie down such a wide topic to a list of 'dos' and 'do nots' you're then forced to go back and correct the principle in order to make it fit the inherent flaws in the practice (WCAG2.0's is  to"...make Web content more accessible to people with disabilities" - note the more). Wouldn't it just be better to trust organisations to meet the original principle, and to explain how they do (and are striving to) individually?

Ok, ok, if we let everyone choose how they want to meet the principle of "accessibility" then there will probably be a huge proportion of people who just ignore it... oh wait, doesn't that happen now?

Content vs Technology

One of the best aspects of WCAG2.0 in comparison to version 1 is that it's much more content focussed. Version 1 was, lets face it, written with the idea that the W3C is the guardian of the Internet - only W3C technologies are supposed to be used and the assumption is that they would be able to to keep up with the Web (ah, didn't we all think that last Millennium?).

So, WCAG2.0 accepts that - yes - the technologies will change and allows you to take advantage of that whilst still retaining some level of accessibility (by allowing you to rate content individually rather than as a single blob of web content). So the language and terms you use are as (if not more) important than the mere technology which provides them. 

What this means, in practice, is that everyone who writes for the Web needs to be thinking about accessibility issues from the second they put fingers to keyboard (no, this isn't the case at the moment for most organisations - think about all those people who write in Word and email it to someone to copy/paste into your CMS...). Do your content writers have guidelines?

People vs Programs

One aspect of WCAG(1 & 2), which is iterated more clearly in BS 8878, is the idea that real accessibility is best achieved by testing sites with users who have varying levels of disability. In my view, there's no other option - sure I can use a screen reader and fire up a contrast testing program but I'm not really judging the entire process from my own experience - as a disabled person would.

I'd go further to say that rather than seeking out specific groups who offer 'testing services' we should really be seeking out people who use our sites - what better evaluation can you get than from your own users who will give feedback on the context of the feature or content you're testing and not just the specific 'tick list' that most consultants provide.

Controled vs Cloud

Here's a question which every organisation is going to face in the next few years - where do our responsibilities in regard to accessibility end? It's no longer the case that we keep to our own web domains, store our servers two floors down and have total control over every piece of our web estate.

Even if we take every step to keep our hosted sites AAA compliant what level of responsibility do we have over our spaces on Flickr or Facebook? For these sites it's the market that drives their need to cater for various access needs - and we cannot guarantee that they will always cater for the kinds of requirements WCAG or British Standards require.

Cost vs Benefit

Now here is a tough one. What kind of steps should we take to make our web content accessible? How do we, pragmatically, ensure that we fulfil our legal and moral obligations whilst, at the same time, not falling foul of 'designing for the minority'.

How simple (technologically and linguistically) should we make the web? More importantly, if we choose not to sacrifice some aspects of our approach how do we explain this to users?

BS 8878 (in draft) says:

"Any user claiming conformance to this British Standard is expected to be able to justify any course of action that deviates from its recommendations."

but what form of justification isn't made clear. WCAG suggests that we:

• Consider using a combination of technologies to achieve your goals.

• If a technology meets some but not all of your criteria, consider providing an alternative solution, which provides disabled people with access to the same content, updated at the same time as the original content.

• If a technology meets none or only a few of your criteria, and an alternative, accessible method of providing that content is not reasonable or possible, ensure you let your disabled users know why this is the case.

In many cases we might seek to make content available to a wider audience by putting it on the web. Take video or streaming of talks and training sessions for example.

An event which might have been 'accessible' only to 20 or 30 participants who can physically make it to a room can be streamed or, better yet, recorded and posted online for very little cost. At this point the content is obviously more accessible than it was because it can be accessed by more people.

On top of that, the content is no less accessible than it was when the physical event took place (it's still lacking audio description or textual transcription). Adding transcriptions or other accessible assitive content can often cost far more than the original event.

The alternative for many is just to not put such content online - is that really the best solution? Is universal equality through universal poverty of access really acceptable?

Perhaps another alternative exists, Paul Boag's video has a community created transcript. If we provide the means for crowdsourced additional information perhaps we can, then, bridge the gap between wholly inaccessible (ie offline) and partially-accessible (non-WCAG compliant) content?

A Final Note

Often the reaction to the potential legal ramifications of the Disability Dissemination Act (and thus WCAG and BS guidelines) is disproportionate concern. Meeting the key principles of access, and justifying your approach, will probably negate the worries of most users - and the most important thing (far more important than meeting the specifics of W3C and BSI documents) is that we listen to users when they talk to us about our websites.

Accessibility guidelines can also tend to be manipulated, or oversold, by companies eagre to sell their accessibility services and by web designers who would rather not have the hassle of learning a new technology or improving their own skills.

PS: Brian Kelly (all round UKOLN web guru) has some great posts on accessibility over a fairly long period - his ideas about Accessibility 3.0 are interesting, he seems to be erring more toward the principles approach - and the application of API-type approaches to solve access issues. His other posts (1, 2, 3, 4) are all very interesting too - particularly the last post on Adaptability.

Back at the Keyboard

At the start of December I moved to a new role, on temporary secondment, within my work where I'm putting my research and web experience to good work. Since then time has seemed to be compressed as I've settled into the new role and been jumping from having my head buried in stats to holding focus groups.

It's all been very exciting and, I'm afraid, this blog has fallen a bit by the wayside. The new job carries with it it's own blog (well... sort of) but that doesn't mean I'll be giving up on this blog but it has helped me to redefine what will go where. 

I'm not sure if they will both live in tandem for ever and ever (I think that depends a lot on the types of content which end up on the Work blog) but for now they're two separate entities.

Anyway, if anyone thought I'd either given up or fallen off the planet then apologies but normal service has been resumed.

[PS: I very nearly considered leaving this post 'till February 2nd just to make it 2 months without any updates!]

How easy is your catalogue to search?

One of the eternal questions, and worries, for Libraries is the user-friendliness of their search mechanism. For most of us that means the OPAC provided by our library system vendor and traditionally Libraries have been prone to simple 'out-of-the-box' implementations or (perhaps even worse...) turning 'on' all of the catalogue's added-value features.

Recently, however, there have been more attempts to provide a coherent - and contextual - approach to the OPAC. Let's face facts: No one reads help pages or FAQs. It's true - check your own web logs. So how do you help your users to get the most out of their search (and most importantly, not just walk away)? Here's some ideas.

Little and Often 

Ok - so the big chunks of help don't work but there's nothing wrong with a nudge in the right direction. Check out any popular website and you'll see succinct clues to how and why results appear as they do. The best trick I've found is to try and write a short sentence to explain a function and then cut it down to half the time. 

Reuse! Reuse! Reuse!

Take a look at the University of Huddersfield Catalogue (the work of Dave Pattern) - data's been pulled from search and usage logs to create neat little features like the Tag Cloud on the front page and the Amazon-style 'other people also searched with' feature on the results page.

Don't Fight Google

It's done. People expect your search box to work like Google. In fact, not just like Google but better than Google. We can moan about the 'dumbing down' of researchers but as soon as people see that empty white box they expect to stick a string of (misspelled) keywords into it and get a result they like within the first page of hits. The sooner we learn to work within these parameters, and not fight them, the sooner we can build better mechanisms for search. And don't even think about making the default search anything except keyword.

Know Your Data (& Fix Your Indexing)

In any kind of searching consistency is everything so we all need a firm grip on our data. A beautifully constructed catalogue record is one thing but if your search parameters and indexing are so complicated that complex combinations are required to achieve useful search results perhaps it's time to reflect on the value of that data. A few coherent indexes with consistent data will always beat a hundred 'correct' ones.

Accept the Complexity 

Sometimes, however the gap between user expectations and the data is just too vast. Say, for example, that you're predominantly a science library but you've also got a small audio collection - how do you provide a straightforward service to your 90% of science users but also support the 10% of audiophiles? Sometimes it comes down to accepting that you're going to hit issues and making innovative use of zero results pages, 404s, "Email a Librarian" functions and hey - maybe even a live 'search help' facility.

A fair number of libraries are starting to look faceted and other 'innovative search solutions' (Primo, Aquabrowser, VUFind, and so on) to try and give a kick start to their user experience. These products are great but we still have to remember to be clear in our approach to tailoring that user experience.

The final approach is to embrace the major search engines and to focus on exposing your catalogue and Search Engine Optimisation. I have to admit to having some sympathy for this approach - rather than trying to constantly improve your own search it should be possible to just have a first class landing page and leave the rest of the work to Google, Yahoo! and the next great search engine through a site-search. Of course, this all depends on how open your catalogue is to indexing - or how up you are on XML site maps.

Mashed Libraries

I'm off in London today to attend the Mashed Libraries event at Birkbeck college. It looks 
like a great opportunity to explore some of the approaches and, for me, I'm hoping to get a 
grip on how others are approaching their own resources/data sources.

There seems to be a hefty practical element, it'll be interesting to see how that goes for 
those of us who are perhaps (ahem...) not code-minded! I've been given the opportunity to 
outline what we're doing at our library and - I hope - get feedback on the approach. Hopefully 
I'll be able to return home jam packed with ideas for how our library can do some really 
innovative things with our sources and resources.

Understanding the Value of an Information Qualification

Meredith Farkas [via Andrew Eynon's Library Blog] has posted the results of a brief survey into how prepared people felt by their academic Library School courses (and her own analysis). The results make for interesting reading - and it's interesting to see the sheer number of times that a lack of technical skills preparation appears. In many ways the information community places an almost iconic focus on the ideal of the (academically qualified) 'professional' but it's clear from even this small survey that there is a gap between the theory and practice.

Although I agree that there's always a need to keep these kinds of courses current and relevant I'm not sure that equating the idea of a 'professional' librarian with a trained librarian is all that useful - experience is an essential part of building an engaged career and (at least in the UK) lots of library studies students undertake their course whilst employed. 

If librarians are signing up for courses to extend their practical knowledge with theory then surely course coordinators can, at the same time, learn practice from the students? I dubious of the suggestion that study can make anyone 'professional', a qualification is one thing but professionalism is a heady cocktail of study and practical experience. 

Where is library2.0 'happening' except in libraries? One of the challenges for academia is that it has to engage with practice whilst also maintaining enough of a distance to allow far-sighted theory and research patterns to develop. To expect that, at the end of a course (never mind an undergraduate one), a student is equipped to move into the leading-edge of any field is unreasonable - for most, study is about learning key skills which can be applied to a work environment in order to expand and extend their capacity.

[Photo from Andrew Schwegler]