Panel Session:

1. Panel Session:Optimising Technology in Libraries The Sceptics View Of New Technologies About This Talk Panel sessions sometimes fail to be interactive and simply give mini-presentations which fail to engage the audience. In this talk Brian Kelly challenges consensus views and invites rebuttals. Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Bath Email B.Kelly@ukoln.ac.uk UKOLN is supported by:

2. The Areas XHTML RSS and News Feeds Areas OfConsensus Wikis Blogs

3. XHTML – Where We Should Be • XHTML: • Latest version of HTML • W3C Recommendation • Provides formal grammar which makes reuse easier • Use of XHTML Strict encouraged as a migration path to XHTML 2.0 and true happiness XHTML is HTML expressed in an XML format. This promises the advantages of XML through simple changes to the well-used HTML grammar (e.g. tags in lower case, quoted attributes, etc.) XHTML 1.0 will be followed by XHTML 2.0 – a redesigned markup language based on best practices and lessons learnt (and is not backwards compatible)

4. XHTML – Where We Should Be? • But: • Invalid XML pages should not be processed (unlike HTML where the spec expects browsers to attempt to render them) • Most Web pages are still invalid • Widespread use of XHTML will result in mostly blank pages in Web browsers! • 94% of browsers don’t support XHTML correctly • Tweak in XHTML spec which allows for deviations for non-compliant browsers is ambiguous • Is it likely that a non-backwards-compatible XHTML 2.0 will ever take off? Conclusions: XHTML is not a standard which should be deployed lightly

5. RSS And News Feeds - Cool • RSS: • A lightweight format for syndication • Support provided for free in many Blogs • Widely used (e.g. BBC, …)

6. RSS And News Feeds – Cool? • But: • Embedding newsfeeds from 3rd parties on your Web site allows them to write to your Web site without further checking – this could be dangerous • Even if the news is accurate the content could be embarrassing (e.g. THES news of University league table with your University bottom) • Which RSS – 0.9, 1.0, 2.0 or Atom? • Do we have mature QA for news feeds yet (e.g. invalid characters such as &, © and £ can cause feeds to break)

7. Blogs – Too Good To be True • Blogs: • Allows individuals to publish content easily • Often standards based – e.g. RSS feeds • Blog companies provide professional looking templates • Democratising : • Blog community responses to misleading statements in US election • The Baghdad Blogger • …

8. Blogs – Too Good To be True? • Blogs: • Vanity publishing • I don’t want to read about every thing you did today • Often not maintained (remember the diary you received as a child?) • The potentially valuable stuff may be stored by third parties • Will it still be there next year? • Who owns it? • Organisational memory can be diffused

9. Wikis – One To Watch • Wikis: • The Web as originally envisaged - everyone can author • Easy to use • Wikipedia is a proven success

10. Wikis – One To Watch? • Wikis: • Can we trust everyone? • Dangers of automated Wiki spam: Wikipedia may be able to manage this, but can we? • “A colleague has created a page in a Wiki. I disagree with the content, but it’s his page. If he sent it by email I would have given my views in my reply” • Can we trust the content ? • Traditional Web authoring (content author -> Web editor) may lead to bottlenecks but ensures quality • Lack of standards for the Wiki markup • Too much Wiki software –which is the best?

11. Questions • Any questions, comments, disagreements, …?